MAS & AirAsia vs The People of Malaysia

To put things simple enough, RM18 million of MAS’ very important, very hard earned cash was given to another company belonged to one of its directors. Basically, a director of MAS, Tony Fernandes got RM18 million given to his other company – a football team, Queens Park Rangers (QPR).

There is a massive conflict of interest there. Worse, the transaction was transacted like a kneejerk reaction. Like someone had jerk the leash of owners of MAS and bamboozled them into agreeing to give their money to another director.

MAS and AirAsia even said in their statements to Bursa Malaysia ‘that the collaboration agreement would only be committed upon once an anti-trust analysis had been completed and was in compliance with the applicable laws with regards to anti-trust.’

But what happened soon after was anything but being compliant to the anti-trust laws. The routes to KL – Bandung and KL – Sandakan were taken off without so much of a warning; leaving AirAsia as the sole service provider of the routes.

There aren’t any other foreign flights to ply this route for customers to choose from too.

When MAS was still plying this route, the average ticket price of AirAsia ticket to Bandung from Kuala Lumpur was around RM300 to RM400 and could be as high as RM800 if you had bought them a few days before the departure date.

But currently, even at two weeks before the date, AirAsia is selling them at more than RM1,000 each! It was RM800 if you buy slightly earlier than that.

This is in serious breach of anti-competitive laws.

Customers are at the mercy Air Asia.

Do you know that flights to Jakarta via KLM is much more cheaper than AirAsia’s own flights? KLM provides food and in flight entertainment too. With all those incidental fees here and there, Tony Fernandes hoodwinked Malaysians into believing that he provides cheap flights.

Coupled with very lousy service right from the booking department all the way to the quality of its aircraft, AirAsia is a behemoth of which crooks are hiding behind it.

If Azman Mokhtar couldn’t curtail Danny Yusof from agreeing to that RM18 million deal, what makes you think his other investment decisions will be sound?

The deal was mired with blatant conflict of interests which is nakedly open for the public to see and yet the main shareholder of MAS is not doing anything about it. In fact, they are actively supporting this mistake!

The mismanagement and systematic destruction of MAS, the arrogance of the conniving Tony Fernandes, supported by inaction of Khazanah and their investment blunders will certainly not look good on the Prime Minister’s reputation.

But nobody seems to be awake at the moment. Everyone is being bigheaded and high and mighty yet nobody wants to be accountable.

Perhaps, this is time to consider other company to fly with... People should now stand up and say ENOUGH to AirAsia, the financially loss-making company in each year.