Sydney, Jul 19 (IANS): Malaysian airline AirAsia has announced that it would recommence flights to several Australian capital cities and New Zealand later this year for the first time since the Covid pandemic hit.

AirAsia X, which is the long-haul arm of the budget airline, will fly from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne and Perth from November 1, Xinhua news agency reported.

The airline, which has already restarted flights from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney, will also offer flights from New Zealand's capital city to Auckland from November.

There will initially be three flights a week to each capital city before gradually adding more flights to the schedule in early 2023.

The resumption of flights to Melbourne Airport will be the first time in almost four years, with AirAsia X having used a regional Victorian airport from 2018 to 2020.

AirAsia X chief executive Benyamin Ismail said the airline was looking forward to "making long-haul air travel affordable once again" for those living in Australia and New Zealand.

"In 2019, we flew over a million guests to both countries, which shows that Australia and New Zealand are important markets for us, and we connected the same number of Australians and New Zealanders to Malaysia and across ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations)," Ismail said in a report in Simply Flying.