Malaysia Airlines should not be privatised

WRESTING ailing Malaysia Airlines from the public domain and taking it private may be a tempting proposition, with its financial woes growing in the face of the missing MH370 jet. But this is the easy way out, and there is no guarantee that things could improve for the airline.

For this reason, no matter how vigorously fee-hungry investment bankers pitch to state-owned Khazanah Nasional - the airline's major shareholder - that it should take the carrier private, now is not the time. Taking Malaysia Airlines private has to be part of a well thought out strategic plan, not an act of desperation in the wake of an unprecedented crisis or because its share price has tanked.

The weighty decisions facing the airline - how to trim the bloated 20,000-strong workforce, slash cost, fend off nimble rivals, stem sliding yields, build a profitable network and woo customers back - are very much the same now as they were before the ill-fated plane vanished. The solutions will not miraculously turn up just because the carrier is privatised and concomitantly shielded from public scrutiny, cumbersome quarterly reports and bureaucratic layers.