MH370 The MH370 incident has clipped Malaysia Airlines' wings in terms of reputation and its chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya admitted this.
Jauhari noted that an airline would need at least six months to recover from a market reputation issue, but stressed that MAS would do it sooner.
"We have a lot of work to do... The airline needs to get itself together," he told the daily briefing on the missing jet in Kuala Lumpur this evening.
Once again, Jauhari was asked if he would resign over this incident, to which he replied: “I have work to do right now.”
Since MH370 vanished from radar screens on March 8, the airline has been hit by a string of incidents involving its planes.
Meanwhile, acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said he would discuss with Singapore to learn about that country’s experience in dealing with the crash of SilkAir Flight 185 in 1997.
“Even this morning, during the bilateral meeting between the two prime ministers of Singapore and Malaysia, there was new information shared and offers of cooperation.
“I am working closely with Singapore to see what they did with the SilkAir crash and they definitely did not talk about dollars and cents,” Hishammuddin said.
‘Similarities to Flight 185'
Flight 185, which took off from Jakarta for Singapore, crashed into a river in Palembang, killing all 97 passengers and seven crew members.
Investigators said they could not determine the cause of the crash due to inconclusive evidence, but like MH370, deduced it could have been caused by deliberate flight input, possibly by the pilot.
However, a court case on the crash did not see pilot suicide as the cause but attributed it to possible malfunction involving the Boeing 737 due to similar incidents involving the same aircraft model.
SilkAir is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Airlines.
Investigators have yet to find conclusive evidence for the cause of Flight MH370 going missing, but have consistently said the aircraft was deliberately diverted by someone in the plane.
Commenting on the ongoing MH370 investigation, Hishammuddin brushed off coordination concerns supposedly arising from too many investigation bodies on board the case.
‘Better to have more experts’
“It is an unprecedented situation, it has never been done before so no matter how many investigators it will take, what do we benchmark it against? It would be irresponsible to judge right now.
“The more experts we have, the better...” he said.
Aviation agencies and investigators from China, United Kingdom, the United States and France are assisting Malaysia in the Flight MH370 probe.
Hishammuddin also refused to speak on the cost of the search operation for Flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean, which entered its 31st day today.
He declined to discuss about the insurance for the family members of the passengers at this point of time, stressing that discovery of the black box would be “very significant” in moving forward.
