MAS Aims to Return to Profitability in 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, June 21 (Bernama) -- Malaysian Airline System Bhd (MAS) on Thursday revised its profitable target plan to 2014 from 2013 set earlier. Its Chief Executive Officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said the national carrier's main focus now was to ensure that revenue was higher than cost of operations. "We aim to trim operational costs by 20 per cent, and to bring down revenue per available seat-kilometre by 10 per cent, within three years," he said. He said some of the initiatives would be executed in the next six months to a year via optimising all the assets, making some cost reduction and leverage their work efficiency. “We give ourselves up to 2014, basically to return to profitability, a change from our earlier target by 2013,” he told the media after the company's annual general meeting here on Thursday. He said the airline would also optimise its fleet capacity by increasing frequencies on some profitable routes. "We want to realise our capacity to where the opportunity are. We are currently utilising the nine-hour flight routes and plan to increase up to 11 hours flight routes," he said adding that the new A380 would help to boost further its fleet efficiency. "We have the right mixture of aircraft types which will enable us to build a better orientation towards capitalising on the region particularly for the short-haul routes," he added. In the meantime, he said MAS would also look into other areas that they can deal with including maintenance, ownership, utilisation, system and procurement of aircraft. On the MAS's sukuk programme, Ahmad Jauhari said RM1 billion (US$314.4 million) from the total of RM2.5 billion (US$786.11 million) sukuk had been fully subscribed with the balance already fully committed while the special purpose vehicle (SPV) is still in progress and expected to be done in the next two months. -- BERNAMA