While Malaysia Airlines (MAS) struggles to get out of years of financial woes and heads towards a corporate restructuring exercise that will see it being delisted and made fully private, a Mashable report has come out claiming that the ailing national carrier is burning through USD2.16 million (RM6.7 million) every day.
The report quotes Howard University professor Oliver McGee as stating, “The southeast Asia air carrier burns its cash reserves at nearly USD2.16 million (RM6.7 million) each day.” The academician added that operational costs alone account for USD1.6 million (RM5.02 million) of MAS’s daily epxenditure.
The most visible sign of the airline’s failing health? The Mashable report points to shared photos from travellers flying on MAS flights, with images of empty check-in counters and flight cabins that look as full as private chartered flights … which is to say, not very full at all:
The twin tragedies of Flights MH370 and MH17 this year seem to have had disastrous effects on customer confidence in the safety of travelling on Malaysian Airlines, and if these images are to be believed, travellers are staying away from MAS in droves.
One person’s shared image had to be pulled from the report, however: Ipoh-born Masterchef UK winner Catherine Chin Coombes complained that a photo she posted of her family in an apparently empty MAS flight was misleading, as the rest of the passengers had not yet boarded the eventually full aircraft.
Malaysia Airlines is currently undergoing a corporate restructuring instigated by its majority stakeholder, federal investment arm Khazanah Nasional Bhd (Khazanah). Khazanah is buying out all remaining shares of MAS it doesn’t already own for RM1.4 billion in order to delist the airline from the Bursa Malaysia and take it fully private.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that part of MAS’s restructuring might involve massive job cuts, with up to 6,000 layoffs from its staff of about 20,000.
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