Saturday, August 03, 2019

The sad story of MAS touched by King 'Minus'


Extracts from FMT:




One plane crashed, another missing – just change the name, Nazri says on Malaysia Airlines

KUALA LUMPUR: Former Barisan Nasional (BN) secretary-general Nazri Aziz today suggested a change of name for Malaysia Airlines, saying the national carrier has become synonymous with tragedy and negativity.
He said the airline’s name had been kept out of good will but that it had “hit rock bottom”.
“If you want to sell it or anything else, then good. But I think change the name – Air Malaysia, Malaysia Airways – because now, Malaysia Airlines has a bad name.
“It has become synonymous with negativity. One plane crashed, one plane went missing. People kept the name due to good will. But if one (plane) is missing and another got shot, just change the name,” he told reporters at the Parliament lobby.

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Kaytee notes:

Chinese and Indians would say MAS has bad feng shui (yes, Indians do feng shui stuff as well though with garam masala while Chinese do it with ngo-hiong-hoon or 5-spice powder, wakakaka)

Actually MAS was doing fine until "someone" sold it to Tajudin Ramli in order to lay his hands on cash flow - all went downhill since, yes, since MAS was affected by the 'Minus Touch' of obviously, King Minus.


Nazri does have a point in saying that today, the national carrier has become synonymous with tragedy and negativity. But that would be the consequences if afflicted with the sial-ness of the 'Minus Touch'.

In yonder days, MAS was Malayan Airways Limited (MA) in May 1947. With the formation of Malaysia in 1963 it changed its name slightly to become Malaysian Airways.


Two years later, when Singapore was expelled from Malaysia, it became MSA or Malaya-Singapore Airlines.

Then six years later, in 1971, MSA became separately Singapore Airlines and Malaysian Airline System Berhad.


After the abbreviation copyright dispute was sorted out between Singapore and Malaysia, but initially with Singapore even sneakily calling its new independent airline 'Mercury Singapore Airline' in order to retain the branded name MSA (by adopting the name of Stamford Raffles' ship 'Mercury' with which he sailed to Singapore). Singapore dropped that after Malaysia threatened to sue Singapore with a compensation order of Singapore $72.7 million [equivalent to $794 million in 2018]

Malaysian Airline initially adopted the initials MAL. Then someone pointed out that MAL meant (still does) 'bad', 'wrongful', 'ill' as in 'malfunction', 'malcontent', malfeasance', etc.


Thus MAS came into being with much praise and brouhaha, because it stands for, among many things, 'gold' in Bahasa Melayu. But as mentioned, in 1994, according to Tajudin, Daim told him the PM, then Mahathir, wanted him (Tajudin) to buy a controlling share in MAS. Wakakaka. One could NOT say 'No' to Mahathir then, as Tajudin was reminded.


Tajudin was badly affected in 1997 in the Asian financial crisis and the Mahathir government bought MAS back from him at RM8 per share, the EXACT price Tajudin paid for in 1994, even though MAS shares were then worth only RM3.68 per share. By then, much had been sucked out of MAS.

As I mentioned, let Mahathir touched anything, it's doomed for failure as we have seen. The MAL abbreviation must have come into effect, wakakaka.

Anyway, what name would you propose to Nazri, wakakaka, who wants to change the bad 'feng shui' name of MAS?

Mafulat? Mfer? Wakakaka. As long as it doesn't have anything to do with King Minus, the bad feng shui man with the 'Minus Touch' it'll be OK.


1 comment:

  1. Do you honestly believe anyone is interested to buy MAS when they see themselves as businessmen needing to continue feeding deadwood and cronies besides running a profitable airline?

    It would be better to wait for MAS to go bankrupt, employees all sacked, all contracts cancelled and start afresh with new hirings and new contracts to manage the airline.

    Someone may be interested if a soft loan from Govt. Is also thrown in.

    Otherwise, let it disappear together with all those horrible accidents.

    ReplyDelete