The political opening-up of Myanmar, the former Burma, is being marked this winter by an unprecedented growth in air capacity in the country. And hardly a month goes by without the announcement of new routes to Yangon or now Mandalay. Since April, Qatar Airways, Eva Air, ANA, Singapore Airlines and Korean Air have announced the launch of flights to the Burmese economic metropolis.
For their part, Silk Air, Thai Airways, Bangkok Airways, the AirAsia group and Myanmar Airways International (MAI) will be increasing their frequencies. The national carrier Myanmar Airways will be offering more flights to Cambodia and Kuala Lumpur, while it has announced the launch of a Bangkok-Mandalay route, probably at the beginning of 2013. It will then be in competition with Thai AirAsia, which is launching four flights a week to Mandalay from 4 October, also from Bangkok.MAI is also trying to develop cooperation with the domestic airlineAirKBZ. This would give passengers the possibility of flying to around ten domestic destinations on the same ticket.
Seat capacity to/from Yangon will therefore increase by 32.5%, as the airport of the former capital prepares to welcome more than three million passengers, compared with 2.4 million in 2011.
