It said the Malaysian Aviation Commission (Mavcom) had approved these flights for the festive season by six airlines – Malaysia Airlines, Batik Air, AirAsia, Firefly, MASWings and MYAirline.

This will see a 43% increase in flight capacity when compared to the same festive period last year.

“Mavcom has approved all the additional (flight) capacity requests by airlines, offering fixed fares to major destinations domestically,” the ministry said in a statement.

Malaysia Airlines is offering 184 additional flights, followed by Batik Air (173), AirAsia (130), Firefly (18), MASWings (12) and MYAirline (10).

Of the additional 527 flights, 390 involve flights from the peninsula to Sabah and Sarawak, with 118 flights from the peninsula to Kota Kinabalu and the rest to Tawau (70), Sandakan (32), Kuching (102), Sibu (34), Miri (20) and Bintulu (14).

These flights are in addition to the 5,617 initial flights scheduled within Peninsular Malaysia, 2,149 between the peninsula and Sarawak, and 2,033 between the peninsula and Sabah.

On March 29, Malaysia Airlines, Firefly and MASWings had announced that they would provide an additional 20,000 flight tickets for the Hari Raya period.