Airline News
MAS appoints COO, cuts routes
June 29th 2015
Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has appointed Peter Bellew, currently director of flight operations at Ryanair, as its new chief operations officer. Read More » Bellew will join MAS chief Christoph Mueller’s executive team from September 1, as the carrier simultaneously announced the appointments of Laurent Recoura as head of sales, and Faridah Hashim as head of corporate communications.
Meanwhile, MAS is currently undertaking a network rationalisation exercise as part of its 12-point Recovery Plan announced last year. As such, MAS last week said it would axe its daily Brisbane A330 service from August 9 (Garuda Indonesia pulled out of Brisbane in March), as well as reduce service to Perth from twelve-weekly to daily from August 15. Kuala Lumpur-based MAS will also terminate its daily service to Male from August 23, and reduce frequency to Adelaide (daily to four-weekly), Guangzhou (twice-daily to daily), Ho Chi Minh City (four- to thrice-daily), Hong Kong (four- to thrice-daily), Manila (five- to four-daily), Melbourne (thrice- to twice-daily), Siem Reap (daily to five-weekly), Sydney (thrice- to twice-daily), Taipei (twice-daily to daily) and Yangon (14-weekly to eleven-weekly).
Malaysian Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, has previously said if MAS decided “to cut routes to Europe, for instance, we will offer them to AirAsia X or Malindo”. In other MAS news, last week This Week in Asia-Pacific Aviation learnt from MAS executives that the airline has so far been unable to find a potential buyer for two A380s it is looking to sell.
