AirBorneo: Pricing, routes, and website review
Sarawak state owned airline, AirBorneo recently launched their official website www.airborneo.com and several domestic routes.
The highly anticipated website comes as the airline prepared for its first flight on 14 January 2026.
Here I will talk about what was presented on launch day by the airline as the airline is a key interest to Sarawak’s growing tourism.
AirBorneo’s website: www.airborneo.com
The airborneo.com domain name is easy to remember, and it reflects the brand instantaneously. It’s great that the company managed to secure such a top-level domain and didn’t have to go for other less appealing names like ‘flyairborneo’ or ‘airborneo.net’.
When it comes to the website design, it looks rather dated.
This is largely due to the use of dark yellow (or rustic golden) to represent one of the three main colours of the airline, with the other two being dark red (almost maroon) and black—all representing the colours of the Sarawak flag.
Also, the site doesn’t promote its destinations (something most airlines do), but focuses on news related to the airline itself.
However, the site loads fast, and it puts out what one needs to fly with the airline, which is a place to book flights, manage bookings and learn about the airline.
What wasn’t great is that some features, such as bookings and ‘join us’, noticeably left the main domain to subdomains, and also displayed an entirely different layout.
Aside from that, navigation between the subdomain and main domain is rather inconsistent as well. The “Join Us” link also forcefully opened a new pop-up, which can be an issue if you have one of those ‘pop-up blockers’ installed on your browser.
When it comes to bookings, AirBorneo’s booking system needs improvement. This is particularly needed once you are redirected to the travel (or booking site).
Here, modifying the departure airport isn’t possible, leaving you stuck to choose destinations from only one airport (the innitial airport you had chosen).
To choose a new departure airport, you need to head back to the main site by clicking the AirBorneo logo—a slight inconvenience.
Overall, airborneo.com is a fast, functional, unattractive website with some minor bugs
AirBorneo routes
There is no secret that AirBorneo took over all MASwings routes, which are largely government – subsidized Rural Air Service (RAS).
This means that AirBorneo is flying to places like Bario, Long Akah, Long Seridan, Marudi, Tawau, Tanjung Manis, and so forth. These routes are served by either ATR 72-500 or DHC-6-400 Twin Otter aircraft.
Current routes are listed below (list of routes are lifted from MASWings previous routes).
- Bario – Long Seridan
- Bario – Long Lellang
- Bario – Ba’kelalan
- Bintulu – Sibu
- Kota Kinabalu (KK) – Lahad Datu
- Kota Kinabalu (KK) – Limbang
- Kota Kinabalu (KK) – Lawas
- Kota Kinabalu (KK) – Labuan
- Kota Kinabalu (KK) – Mulu
- Kota Kinabalu (KK) – Kudat
- Kuching – Mulu
- Kuching – Limbang
- Kuching – Tanjong Manis
- Kudat – Sandakan
- Lahad Datu – Sandakan
- Lawas – Ba’kelalan
- Lahad Datu – Sandakan
- Limbang – Lawas
- Marudi – Bario
- Marudi – Long Akah
- Marudi – Long Seridan
- Marudi – Long Lellang
- Mukah – Miri
- Mukah – Bintulu
- Mukah – Kuching
- Marudi – Long Banga
- Miri – Mulu
- Miri – Limbang
- Miri – Bintulu
- Miri – Sibu
- Miri – Lawas
- Miri – Ba’kelalan
- Miri – Bario
- Miri – Marudi
- Miri – Long Lellang
- Miri – Long Akah
- Miri – Long Banga
- Miri – Labuan
- Sandakan – Tawau
- Sibu – Mukah
RAS routes are subsidized by the government because they are unprofitable and exist largely to serve the rural communities.
That said, AirBorneo is looking to go beyond RAS services with strong indication it will start flights connecting Kuching to Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Indonesia to bring in cash flow as an airline.
AirBorneo ticket prices
AirBorneo was anticipated to offer affordable airfares for Sarawakians, so when they finally released their rates, many weren’t that happy as they were equal to MASWINGS, or more expensive than what they anticipated.
However, during my checks, prices, particularly direct flights, are competitively priced as they include 7kg hand–carry baggage and 10kg checked baggage.
The airline currently offers two types of airfares namely RAS Basic and RAS Flex. The diffference between the two is the penalty imposed for ticket change as well as for a refund.
Flights that had one layover (transit) were also competitively priced while those having more transits had higher prices, similar to standard airline practice.
Just for the sake of comparison, these are the cheapest non-direct one-way flight prices within the month of January 2026 for AirBorneo, upon checking at 11:00 AM on 13 December 2025.
- Kuching to Sibu: RM274
- Kuching to Bintulu: RM285
- Kuching to Miri: RM259
- Kuching to Limbang: RM214
- Kota Kinabalu to Miri: RM203
- Kota Kinabalu to Bintulu: RM355
- Kota Kinabalu to Sibu: RM402
- Kota Kinabalu to Kuching: RM312
Overall, I felt the prices weren’t that expensive although if compared to what AirAsia had to offer, they can be deemed more expensive.
Despite that, it is important to note that AirAsia serves these routes via direct flights with their ‘promotional rates’ limited in number.
AirBorneo at time of writing, doesn’t practice promotional fares just yet, with the airline likely to do so when they start jet services in the future.
Conclusion
There is this feeling that AirBorneo’s launch was ‘rushed’ with the airline still very much a shadow of MASWings despite the airline’s website launch.
Nonetheless, I am confident that the airline will grow to be better as days go by and it would be only a matter of time before the airline becomes a pride of Sarawak, and the people of Borneo as w whole.
