Following the tragic events of 2014 that saw two Malaysia Airlines passenger jets crash, the company has announced that it is to completely restructure itself on order emerge from a state of ‘paralysis’.
Mueller said that morale at the firm has been extremely low over the last 12 months
Christoph Mueller, the man hired at the end of last year to oversee the restructuring, revealed this week that there would likely be around 6,000 job losses at the new company, although claimed the transition would be done in “an orderly process”. He added that because of the troubles of last year – where flights MH370 and MH17 were shot down over Ukraine and went missing over the Indian Ocean, respectively – the company was now “technically bankrupt.”
The airline’s new CEO formally started work at the beginning of May. In an interview with CNN on Monday, Mueller said that morale at the firm has been extremely low over the last 12 months. “Everything was happening a little bit in slow motion…and that’s the reason why it’s important that we work on the morale. The fighting spirit has suffered.”
While the airline has yet to decide whether it would fully rebrand itself under a new name, Mueller says that the company had deep-seated problems that extended well beyond last year’s tragic plane incidents. Strong competition in Asia and soaring costs meant that considerable losses had hit since 2008, amounting to around $1.8bn. Mueller added to CNN that the restructuring was therefore long overdue, “That has been mushrooming over the years, so we have to reset the system.”
