A lot of hard work ahead for national carrier

AFTER nine months and a whole lot of vitriol, the share swap deal between Malaysia Airlines (MAS) and AirAsia has been cancelled.

If it had been a pregnancy, you would be literally left holding the baby.

The official reason is, it brought about noises that distracted everyone from the job at hand - which is turning around the country's national carrier.

Funny, I could have sworn Khazanah Nasional Bhd had said the share swap was done, in effect, to turn around MAS.

It was essential to making its new plans work, it had said at the onset.

They hadn't bargained for the noises probably.

So the unions should be happy now, as a colleague pointed out, it's what they wanted.

Yes it is. It's exactly what they wanted, to the letter.

What about the events which took place after the share swap, though?

The declassing of Firefly's operations, a multi-million ringgit sponsorship of Queen Parks Ranger, an entirely new board, a new management team.

Should these be undone as well?

I assume that you can't back out of a sponsorship with a "Sorry, there's been a mistake".

There has also been no word of a revamp board (except for the resignation of two high-profile Tune Air nominees) or management team, and it is understood that Khazanah Nasional is giving the board and management team more time to prove their worth.

A revisit of Firefly's post-share swap business model would be desirable but will this lead to more costs for the already-burdened airline?

Then there's the curious case of 20,000-strong MAS loyalists being led by a management team with key positions filled by ex-AirAsia men - something which was surely accomplished with the arrival of AirAsia's co-founders on MAS board.

Is this situation tenable in the long run? Only time will tell.

If the share swap can be undone, it stands to reason that all the actions taken thereafter could be undone as well.

As one union source puts it, maintaining the current management and board is far from ideal.

It is a matter of building trust, he said. With all that has happened, it would be difficult to believe that the board and management can remain objective.

So if you think Wednesday's announcement marks the end of MAS' problems, think again. There's a lot of hard work ahead.

By btimes.com.my