Flag carrier Malaysia Airlines said Wednesday it has deferred plans indefinitely to fly to new destinations in India and China as part of efforts to contain costs and return to profit.

"Services to new destinations such as Amristar, Cochin (in India), Fuzhou, Guilin and Shenzen (in China) will be deferred indefinitely as part of the national airline's efforts to contain its cost growth and improve performance," the carrier said in a statement.

The carrier had planned to fly to these new destinations in November and early December.

Malaysia Airlines said it would also consolidate its network by increasing frequencies and capacity to selected destinations while reviewing sectors that have demonstrated poor performances.

The national carrier currently operates 30 weekly flights from Kuala Lumpur to seven Indian cities; New Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore, Calcutta, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad.

Frequencies into New Delhi, one of the three primary gateways in the Indian sub-continent, would be increased to daily flights from four times weekly, it said.

Better performance

Malaysia Airlines flies into eight Chinese cities; Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Kunming, Shanghai, Xiamen and X'ian. Flights to Xiamen would be increased to four weekly services from three.

Capacity would be injected into Australia and New Zealand, specifically Perth and Auckland, in which passengers can look forward to flying on the B747 daily, it said, adding that current flights are operated on the B777.

Malaysia Airlines said the network realignment was expected to bring about a better performance and it would continue to evaluate its operations and will further consolidate services to complement traffic demand.

The airline recently announced one of its worst ever quarterly losses at RM280.66 million in the three months to June after a profit of RM26.58 million ringgit a year earlier.