You would think that the revamping of Malaysian Airlines (MAS) would entail truly drastic measures, in line at least with the modern economic forces at play against conventional airlines. But the excerpts from the recent Q&A session chaired by MAS managing director Idris Jala proved otherwise.

We’re actually considering staff salary raises of 3% to 3.5% (when MAS returns to profitability), at a time when MAS’ recovery isn’t even assured. A morale booster maybe, but a temporary one. I like to think that a profitable MAS would be the only way anyone can recover any sort of confidence with one of our national assets.

Now, RM2 billion probably isn’t that much of an injection for the Government. After all, we only built KLCC with RM1.8 billion in 1998. But it would have been nice to see something other than this response, “I prefer not to dwell on the past but to focus on, from here on, how we can make the airline profitable…” when asked about the alleged mismanagement and abuse of privileges in MAS. It’s probably a correct response, but only because profitabiliy would be an impossible aim otherwise.

In any case, we have, at the very least, a turnaround plan for MAS in place. That’s an important first step. Hopefully, we’ll see MAS returning to the black, the same way Proton did after losses in the first and second quarters of the fiscal year of 2005.