KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's long-haul budget carrier AirAsia X Bhd will introduce new flights to Nairobi from Kuala Lumpur from Nov 15 this year. 

An official media announcement on the launch of the new route is expected to be made tomorrow (July 1).

According to Aeroroutes, AirAsia X has filed operational schedule for Kuala Lumpur-Nairobi route with four times weekly flight using its Airbus A330-300 aircraft. 

Flight D7101 will depart Kuala Lumpur at 7pm local time and reach Nairobi at 11pm (Kenya time) while flight D7102 is planned to depart Nairobi at 12.30am (Kenya time) and reach Kuala Lumpur at 3.10pm (local time). 

AirAsia X is believed to have received the traffic rights from the Malaysian Aviation Commission (Mavcom) to operate the route in April this year.

The green light was for the budget carrier to fly up to seven times weekly from Oct this year. 

The flight duration between Kuala Lumpur and Nairbo is about nine hours 40 minutes. 

Nairobi is the second new destination that AirAsia X would add into its list of new routes this year as it introduced Almaty, Kazakhstan in March. 

However, Nairobi is not the airline's first African destination as it has flown to Mauritius in 2016 and 2017. 

Capital A Bhd chief executive officer and AirAsia co-founder, Tan Sri Tony Fernandes has shared on his social media about the new route.

In his Instagram post yesterday, he posted a picture of a leopard looking out of the cockpit window with words "Naije Nairobi" and caption – "Another dream coming. Now everyone can fly to Africa."