Three-and-a-half years after a government renationalisation sparked a successful restructuring at Malaysia Airlines (MAS), the flag carrier has begun searching for a multilateral alliance to take it in.
Commeting on the airline's renewed interest in alliances to state-run media, managing director Ahmad Fuaad Dahlan said: "We have completed our study. We are now in a stage of indicating our interests in joining them." He added: "When the mega alliances come into play, then MAS can look at its business plan and remodel it according to the global linkage that it will join."
MAS began studying whether to join a multilateral alliance in the late 1990s but after the early 2001 renationalisation the carrier said it had to first stem years of losses. It has a wide range of codeshare deals with carriers in the oneworld, SkyTeam and Star alliances, as well as with unaligned carriers like Virgin Atlantic and Air-India. However, its most likely alliance partner is seen as either oneworld or SkyTeam given that two of its key competitors in Southeast Asia, Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways International, are members of Star.
Source: Airline Business
