All the countries have a national flag carrier. Similarly the malaysian airlines is also the flag carrier of Malaysia. What brings honor to the country is the five star rating of the malaysia airlines, an honor shared by only 4 other airlines. Although it does seem strange, but in reality the airline began in the 1920s as the Malayan airways, and was to fly from British occupied Singapore to Kuala lampur. The airline stayed quite limited until after world war I. It started expanding tremendously in the 1940s. Even the world war II brought the economy down, it boosted the proliferation and growth of the malaysia airline as a requirement of the old world’s new needs. This happened mainly due to the increasing requirement of domestic flights for asia from asia itself. Thus malaysian airways saw its first profit based growth.
However, malaysian airlines is also the only airline to suffer thrice mega financial crisis on the verge of bankruptcy. The first one came even before the financial crisis of asia 1997, then 1997 and then finally 2005. All the times malaysia airlines was able to fight back by introducing quite a few schemes meant to make the business work well.
The initiatives were numerous but eventually malaysia airline did recover and finally reported an increase of 184 % by the end of the year 2007, covering up all the losses ever until the year 2005. This luck is not shared by many industries and malaysian airlines is one of the very few who worked hard even in the time of crisis and finally made up for whatever they had lost initially.
Most of the other airlines used to compensate the losses by sacking the staff, sending some on nonpaid leaves for a trimester or two, and cutting the number of flights but continuing operations on all the routes. The decisions taken by the malaysian airways in this context were really wise, since they did not sack any of their employees, retaining the employee loyalty with the brand. For any organization, having this loyalty is extremely important and the lone force that helps in retrieving the lost name and power. Malaysia airlines knew this and hence kept all of its employees. It offered the employees their basic salaries until they could report the first profit which worked well with the employees. The employees who had chosen to leave the institution were still offered the option of taking back their jobs once the company is back to financial stability.
Another major decision taken by malaysian airlines was to cut on the routes. They surveyed the routes that were giving them loss for the past 5 years and hence cut them totally. This included national as well as international routes.
Then another brilliant move taken by the airline was rescheduling the timings of its flights to suit the hoi polloi. People took to these changes warmly.
There were a number of technical changes as well, like the models being operated. Aircraft consuming lesser fuel was operated, and the mode of operation was changed from the original point to point, to the simpler and cheaper hub and spoke.
Once it reached stability, it started introducing new deals like low air fares for people who have never flown with malaysia airlines ever before. Indeed going beyond expectations is not just slogan for the malaysian airways, but a way of living and working. This is the only reason why it has never made expectations and always strived towards achieving beyond what people have expected them to do. One such example came when it surpassed all the expectations and went on to make a remarkable 184 % profit just 2 years after a loss of more than 100 %.
