Updated 5 Sept: If you care to ask around, you’d find that many Malaysians lack faith in Malaysia Airlines long before its current predicament (or negativity, to borrow Zainul’s vocab). By choice, I haven’t flown our national carrier for years. If not for its codeshare arrangements with other carriers, I would have totally exempted myself from MH and the so-called Malaysia Hospitality.The appointment late last month of Bashir Ahmad to the Board of the MAG, the airline’s parent company, tempted me to reassess my lack of faith. But what can one man do to change the fate of an airline?
(The Edge speculated Bashir’s “return” to Malaysia’s aviation here and confirmed the story MAG appoints former MAHB MD Bashir Ahmad as director).
In any case, after my posting below, I was alerted to these three other links related to Malaysia Airlines’ current predicament. All these were reported in the last 24 hours:
1. Engine parts shortage could keep Cathay A350s out for longer - Bloomberg
Original posting
The seasoned business journalist merely asked that the people helming the national carrier, the MAG, or better still Khazanah Nasional (the Prime Minister, unfortunately, is chairman of Khazanah) do a better job at telling us what is killing the airline, once the pride of all Malaysians.
“We are after all shareholders by virtue of Khazanah, and the carrier has the name of our country and flag emblazoned as livery on its planes … Even if we are busybodies who struggle to tell the difference between the galley and the flight deck, we have the right to be informed by the company what is happening with it,” he wrote in The Scoop.
I was not surprised Zainul wasn’t screaming for blood. I think most Malaysians are like him: we are beyond angry. Malaysia Airlines’ “negativities” didn’t just happen yesterday, its fall from grace didn’t occur during or because of the pandemic, or under Najib Razak or Pak Lah.
The rot started way back then during the last years of the last century.
Those responsible - the politicians, their cronies and the corporate wizards who served them both - will probably never have to account for their undoing of what was once a global aviation star.
Most Malaysians like Zainul feel profound sadness whenever the national carrier falls even further than we thought possible. Much like how some of us feel about our football and our press freedom ranking, I guess.
But we are not indifferent. Not yet. And if the people paid to do the job know what’s good for them, they’d better start convincing us.
Last chance, really.
“Or else, with the billions spent on it, in this age of virtual open skies and national carriers worldwide encountering headwinds from budget and private airlines, we could be asking if Malaysia Airlines is more trouble than it is worth,” Zainul concluded.
Read Zainul Arifin’s full column HERE.
No comments:
Post a Comment