Apart from shedding jobs, cutting its fleet size and renegotiating vendor contracts, it would appear nobody envisions what the airline might look like in 10 years' time.

Shukor Yusof

Categorized in : Company News

For the company and the stakeholders, it would be an extension of their turnaround plans because Bellew was the person who was doing much of the day to day operations.

The person with the right credentials has to be given the job. That said, there is no shortage of Malaysians with those qualifications.

There are more aircraft and more flight frequencies. That means there is a lot more traffic in the region. This is mainly leisure traffic, which continues to grow strongly in line with higher purchasing power, looking at the forward bookings for summer, there is a lot of aggressive pricing by airlines.

There won't be any shortage of investors because they are looking at not just an aircraft leasing company (BOC Aviation) but at a company whose future is entrenched in Asia Pacific. It's a growth story.

You can't parachute in someone irrespective of how sterling his previous record shows and expect him to do a job with an airline that's been abused for two decades.

Over the last six months of 2014, very few airlines were brave enough to go into the market and if they did, it was in very small volumes.

The exponential growth in and the demand for air travel were not anticipated by many of the governments in the region, and so you're seeing a lack of infrastructure, airports and pilots because nobody expected low-cost travel would have taken off as quickly, as rapidly, and would be as lucrative as it is now.

I personally know quite a number of people from Malaysia Airlines who have actually gone to the Middle East and I don't blame them because the money is very good, if you compare Middle Eastern carriers to Southeast Asian carriers, they are more advanced, they are growing far quicker — it's all about dollars and cents and they have a bottomless pit of money.

The size of the rights issue is more than expected, almost double SIA's current market cap, indicating the gravity of the situation the airline is facing.

Initially the flying public will understandably have reservations but the aircraft - having been completely and responsibly resurrected - will likely be one of the safest planes around.