Madani FLYsiswa expands: Aswara and state-linked varsity students now eligible
BANGI, Jan 13 — Students from the National Academy of Arts, Culture and Heritage (Aswara) and government-linked universities will now qualify for subsidised flight tickets to head back home during festive seasons, Transport Minister Anthony Loke announced today.
They will be among four new categories of students eligible for the FLYsiswa programme that the Anwar government rolled out since 2023.
Only national public university, polytechnic and government matriculation students had qualified for the initiative before today’s announcement.
The other two categories under the expanded programme are students of Institut Latihan Jabatan Tenaga Malaysia and all state-linked or funded universities.
“The expansion is expected to benefit 6,278 more students. But we hope to do more for students and it won’t stop at just this initiative,” Loke said at the Madani Transport Carnival and FLYsiswa 2026 launch here.
FLYsiswa was introduced amid student backlash over flight ticket pricing as carriers sought to cash in by raising them during peak festive periods.
This made it harder for students from Sabah and Sarawak particularly, mostly already coming from low income background, to be with families for key holidays.
For 2026, Loke said Putrajaya would raise the digital voucher to RM400, RM100 more than when it was first launched in late 2023.
The Anwar administration allocated RM27 million for this year’s FLYsiswa programme, for some 60,000 students.
Not discounting private college students
The success of FLYsiswa has prompted private college students to ask if they could be included in the programme soon.
Loke did not discount the possibility, but suggested factors like inadequate data on the size of students that qualify means the government would have to hold the idea for now.
“On the issue of extending the aid to IPTS (private higher learning institutes), first their size is huge so it makes it difficult for us to estimate the cost,” the Seremban MP said at a press conference held after the launch.
“The reason it’s now limited to public universities and government-linked institutions is because with them we have the numbers. Another thing is with IPTS it’s hard to define clearly (who is eligible).”
