KUALA LUMPUR: Troubled Malaysia Airlines today laid out plans for an across-the-board “hard reset” of the way the carrier is run that will see around 6,000 jobs cut as it struggles to stay in business. <\/p>\n
The bullet-point blueprint, released by email, marks the first concrete move by new CEO Christoph Mueller, a German national who had previously initiated turnarounds at Ireland’s Aer Lingus and Belgium’s Sabena that earned him the nickname “The Terminator” for his job-slashing. <\/p>\n
The plan said the airline was to offer “at least 14,000 jobs” by today to the carrier’s roughly 20,000 existing employees. It did not immediately provide a precise figure. <\/p>\n
The move, however, was expected – the state investment fund that has taken over the flag carrier had said last year that around 6,000 jobs would be lost. <\/p>\n
Under Mueller, 52, the carrier plans to re-invent itself beginning on September 1 with a new brand, and expected new livery as he seeks to repair the damage to the airline’s image suffered in a disastrous 2014. <\/p>\n
In March of last year, flight MH370 disappeared with 239 passengers and crew aboard and remain missing. Four months later, flight MH17 was blown out of the sky by a suspected ground-to-air missile over Ukraine. <\/p>\n
The tragedies were the final straw for an airline that analysts say had already been poorly managed for years, slipping further into the red. <\/p>\n
A state investment fund took it over in a rescue bid late last year, tapping Mueller to take the helm. <\/p>\n
Today’s announcement said the airline planned to “stop the bleeding” in 2015, stabilise next year, and seek to start growing again by 2017. <\/p>\n
It would focus immediately on tasks such as rationalising its head count and route systems. <\/p>\n
Beside job cuts, the flag carrier is widely expected to pull back drastically from unprofitable long-haul routes such as to Europe, and focus instead on regional traffic as it regroups. <\/p>\n
The announcement contained few details, but Mueller was scheduled to brief reporters at 3:00 pm. <\/p>\n
Analysts have long blamed the airline’s failure to compete on poor management, unwise business decisions, government meddling, and unfavourable service and supplier contracts stemming from Malaysia’s crony capitalism. <\/p>\n
The blueprint called for the renegotiating or resetting of major contracts, and a major revitalisation of technology, training, and business operations. <\/p>\n
Mueller, in an email to staff last month, had warned that a major overhaul was necessary as the airline was weighed down by “uncompetitive cost levels” that he said were 20 percent higher than its rivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KUALA LUMPUR: Troubled Malaysia Airlines today laid out plans for an across-the-board “hard reset” of the way the carrier is run that will see around 6,000 jobs cut as it struggles to stay in business. The bullet-point blueprint, released by email, marks the first concrete move by new CEO Christoph Mueller, a German national who had previously initiated turnarounds at Ireland’s Aer Lingus and Belgium’s Sabena that earned him the nickname “The Terminator” for his job-slashing. The plan said the airline was to offer “at least 14,000 jobs” by today to the carrier’s roughly 20,000 existing employees. It did not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-aviation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}