By P PREM KUMAR & ALIFAH ZAINUDDIN

Malaysia Aviation Group Bhd (MAG) will launch a new high-capacity charter airline using Malaysia Airlines Bhd’s (MAB) six Airbus A380s in the third-quarter of the year.

The new airline will be parked under MAG air transportation business that include MAB, Firefly Sdn Bhd and MASwings Sdn Bhd.

MAG said the airline will be the world’s first “ultra high capacity” charter services and will primarily carry haj pilgrims to Mecca, but the group expects robust demand to charter A380s for other destinations worldwide.

The new airline, which was developed as Project Hope, is forecast to be fully operational in 2019.

MAG CEO Peter Bellew said the A380s are currently undergoing refurbishment, minor reconfigurations and repaintings.

He said the new charter airline will be registered as a separate entity and carry a new image, logo, aircraft colour and configuration. Payroll for the employees of the new charter airline will also be separate from MAB.

“It will be a completely separate entity. It will have its own operating licence. We have already appointed all the senior staff except for the CEO, and it will have its own ownership structure.

“It won’t be connected in any way to MAB,” Bellew told The Malaysian Reserve in a recent interview.

Bellew — who is also the MD and CEO of MAB — said the new airline would have more than 600 employees when it becomes fully operational.

“They (employees) won’t all come from MAB. We have a number of our people in MAB who want to work there, but then we will have to hire people, too, mainly cabin crew and pilots.

“This new airline will end up creating 600 to 700 new highly paid jobs, so that is quite a good thing,” he added.

He said MAG may be the first airline to use the super-sized A380s as they were designed to move large numbers of people on demand and would fill the seats better than if the planes were used to service scheduled flights.

“It will be a great use to the aircraft as I think that the aircraft has been misused by other airlines.

“I don’t think that aircraft was originally designed to move 600 to 700 people between congested airports, seven to eight hours apart. We would be making good use out of it with this project.”

MAG had recently appointed MAB head of charter operations Yazid Mohamed as the new airline’s head of commercial effective May 1.

He will be joined by Muhammad Najmi Mansor, who is taking the role of CFO in the project, and head of human resources Zuraidah Mat Dol.

MAG was created last year as part of the restructuring of the old Malaysia Airlines Systems Bhd. Its business is divided into air transportation services, ground services, aircraft leasing and talent development.

MAB will phase out the use of the A380s from its London route next year.

MAG had initially planned to sell the A380s, but abandoned the plan due to the unfavourable market condition for jumbo jets — as carriers switch to smaller jets that are easier to fill and cheaper to fly.

Last March, the Saudi Arabian government agreed to increase the quota for Malaysian pilgrims to 30,200 beginning this year’s haj season from 27,900 last year.

Outside the annual haj season, millions of Muslims from all over the world go to Mecca every year to perform the lesser haj known as umrah.