Former Malaysia Airlines (MAS) chairperson Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahman has appealed to MAS’s workers’ unions to refrain from making rash decisions over business plans by its management to turn around the ailing national carrier.

At the same time, he said it was also imperative that cooperation and support from the airline’s 20,000 employees be sought and obtained otherwise such plans would fail.

“But I would urge all MAS employees to be more patient and not to take hasty actions that are not within the law,” he said in an interview.

MAS’s share swap agreement with budget airline AirAsia had to be unwound two weeks ago following strong resistance from MAS employees’ unions.

Abdul Aziz said it was more appropriate for employees to give full support to the management for any plans to change its business model as such plans were necessary to keep MAS in business.

“MAS needs a new business model and any new business model certainly requires other changes to take place in the process,” he said.

Abdul Aziz, who helmed MAS for over 20 years from the mid-1970s, said the airline’s employees must also brace themselves for the Asean Open Skies Policy due to be implemented in 2015 under which all existing restrictions for airlines in the region flying into each other’s territory would have to be dismantled.

He said despite the scrapping of the share swap, collaboration between MAS and AirAsia in other areas would result in a win-win situation for both if it was carried out in a rational manner.

“When such collaboration runs smoothly, I am confident MAS will once again rise to become a competitive and profitable airline,” he said.

On the larger picture, Abdul Aziz said MAS was set up as a premier full-service airline right from the start till now.

“Suddenly 10 years, another airline emerged to compete with MAS by offering low fares,” he said referring to AirAsia.

“This itself created a competition. Basically the market in our region is a low-fare market. So I think, MAS has no choice but to compete. This means MAS can do both premier service and budget airline service and it could succeed in the competition.

“We can learn from AirAsia as well as learning from other budget airlines. MAS has to compete otherwise it will continue to plunge,” he said.

- Bernama