I read K Temoc's letter AirAsia-Mas price war no such a good thing with great interest. I must say that I agree with Temoc that a case of the strong bullying the weak must never happen and that a price war will eventually lead to the demise of the weaker of the two airlines. And ultimately, that will be bad for us Malaysians.

But who is the favoured son here? AirAsia just received the rights to fly almost all the routes in Malaysia, while the government continues to tie-up MAS' hands by restricting them to only a paltry 22 routes. AirAsia gets118 routes. That is a ratio of more that 5 to 1. The government has forgotten its people and its social responsibility to them. It no longer cares for the people in the interiors of Sabah and Sarawak. It has left them to be eaten alive by the shark of capitalism.

Now a profit-minded AirAsia is free to charge as they wish the poor people of Sarawak, who are left with the option of taking a two-day boat and jeep ride to get back home or pay a king's ranson to AirAsia to fly in an hour to get to the same place.

AirAsia will surely fund its price war from profits ripped from the poor people of Sarawak. Already we can see this. How is it possible for them to offer one million seats free to their passengers and still make hundreds of millions of ringgit in profit. As price wars go, you can't go any cheaper than 'free' seats. The money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is from the people who have been sacrificed by the government in the name of so called savings -the bumiputeras of Sabah and Sarawak.

MAS has no way of responding to the free tickets AirAsia is giving away. Its managing director Idris Jala has to cover the huge RM1.3 billion hole that his predecessor has left. Where is he going to get the money to offer free tickets to match AirAsia's? It looks like MAS will be crushed by the stronger AirAsia as the former just no longer has the money to enter into a price war. It is like sending MAS to war with an unloaded gun and no bullets.

To be fair, if the government wanted a segregation between the cheap airline and the premier, it should have been done equally by imposing a price floor for one and a price cap on the other. Nothing less than the most recently advertised fare prices for MAS and nothing more than the most recently advertised fare prices for AirAsia.

It's a pity we Malaysians are not patriotic. MAS should be the pride of our nation for after all it is what they call Malaysia's national carrier. If MAS fails, we only have ourselves to blame for the loss of a national institution. All because we have foolishly fallen for the glitter and false promise of commercialism. We are betraying our country and ourselves if we let that happen.