AIRASIA has launched daily services between Kuala Lumpur and Semarang, the capital of Central Java, bringing 160 passengers on its maiden flight on February 6.

AirAsia Indonesia president director Dharmadi said: “(Semarang) marks AirAsia’s fourteenth destination (in Indonesia) from Kuala Lumpur.”

The carrier also connects Kuala Lumpur to Jakarta, Surabaya, Medan, Jogjakarta, Bandung, Denpasar, Solo, Balikpapan, Palembang, Aceh, Perkanbaru, Padang and Makassar.

Dharmadi said the Kuala Lumpur-Semarang route had the potential to galvanise the Malaysian outbound market to Semarang, and added that AirAsia was also looking to target transit traffic from China, South Korea and Japan.

“We are working on the China market (especially from) Beijing. In fact, there were passengers from Guangzhou on our maiden flight,” he said.

Meanwhile, AirAsia is scheduled to start twice-daily Jakarta-Semarang services from March 9.