Kota Kinabalu: Sabah Small and Medium Enterprises Association President Dr Deledda Tan wants the Federal Government to review domestic airfare pricing for Sabah flights, citing complaints from businesses over persistently high ticket costs.
She said the Government, particularly the Ministry of Transport, needed to act urgently on the pricing mechanism.
“We received numerous complaints from the business community regarding the high flight tickets from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu,” she said, adding that return fares during peak periods reached as high as RM3,150, while regular period fares often ranged between RM1,500 and RM1,600 or more.
She said a sales director from a five-star hotel told the Association that the high cost of airfares was discouraging visitors from choosing Sabah as a destination, with many customers opting instead to travel overseas.
“He said many travellers would rather spend around RM700 to fly from Kuala Lumpur to destinations such as Vietnam or Thailand than travel to Sabah. This clearly reflects that high airfares have become a major factor undermining Sabah’s competitiveness as a tourism destination,” she said.
She said it was concerning that flights to some international destinations were sometimes cheaper than flights to Sabah, adding that this added to the financial burden on the public and businesses while also weakening Sabah’s appeal as a tourism and investment destination.
She said Sabah, as part of East Malaysia, relied heavily on air travel to connect with the peninsula, making airfares an issue that went beyond tourism to affect business exchanges, investment activity and corporate operating costs.
“For businesses, frequent travel is unavoidable. High airfares mean companies must bear higher operational costs, and these costs will eventually be reflected in the prices of goods and services,” she said.
She said high air transport costs were also a major contributor to the high cost of living and doing business in Sabah, with goods shipped from the peninsula often priced 20 to 30 per cent higher than on the mainland due to transportation costs.
“This not only increases the pressure on businesses but also adds to the financial burden on consumers. In the long run, this is detrimental to Sabah’s economic development,” she said.
She said lowering aviation costs would boost tourism as well as business activity, investment, the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions sector, educational exchanges and talent mobility.
The Association is calling on the Government to review the domestic aviation pricing mechanism to make fares more reasonable and transparent, encourage more airlines to increase flight routes and options to Sabah, introduce better fare management during peak travel seasons, and hold dialogue with the aviation industry to find long-term solutions.
She said the Association recognised that airlines faced their own challenges, including fuel and operational costs, and was not calling for direct government intervention in market pricing.
“We hope the Government will take this long-standing issue seriously and actively seek solutions to ensure Sabah enjoys fairer and more convenient transportation connectivity with the rest of the country, creating greater development opportunities for the people, businesses and the State’s economy,” she said.
