National carrier Malaysia Airlines is planning to fly to 18 new destinations in India and launch more flights to China within the next five years, a report said today.

The airline planned to fly to secondary airports in India such as Amritsar, Trichi and Trivandrum, senior general manager of sales, distribution and marketing Rashid Khan told the Business Times newspaper.

The flag carrier also planned to introduce several more flights to China by 2010, including to Chongqing, Guilin and Nanning, he said.

"Based on these facts, we are confident of seeing an average annual growth of around 12 percent for our Asian routes," he said.

The carrier presently operates 26 weekly flights to India which include routes to New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Kolkata.

In China, the airline operates 63 weekly flights to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Xiamen, Chengdu and Kunming.

It is scheduled to introduce another route to Xian in March.