Former MAHB MD Bashir Ahmad said to be joining MAG board

Thursday 19 Sep 2024

KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 27): Tan Sri Bashir Ahmad Abdul Majid, former managing director of Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd or MAHB (KL:AIRPORT), is set to join the board of directors of Malaysia Aviation Group Bhd (MAG), the parent company of national carrier Malaysia Airlines Bhd, sources said.

Bashir Ahmad is poised to be announced as a new board member soon, according to the sources. In April last year, he was appointed as the chairman of Mass Rapid Transit Corp Sdn Bhd (MRT Corp) — the wholly owned transit arm of the Ministry of Finance.

The MAG board currently comprises seven directors. They are its non-executive group chairman Tan Sri Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin, group managing director Datuk Captain Izham Ismail and five non-executive directors — Tan Sri Krishnan Tan Boon Seng, Cheryl Goh Ching Ling, Wong Shu Hsien, Datuk Zaiviji Ismail Abdullah and Faridah Bakar Ali. Adeline Khoo Suet Ling is an alternate director to Wong.

Bashir Ahmad is no stranger to the airline industry, having joined the now-defunct Malaysian Airline System Bhd as a management trainee in 1972. He served the airline for 29 years. His last role was as its executive vice-president.

In 2001, he was appointed by the government as an aviation adviser to the Ministry of Transport where he served for two years.

He then went on to serve as the longest-serving managing director of MAHB from 2003 to 2014, and subsequently as its adviser until 2017.

According to MRT Corp, Bashir Ahmad remains active in the global aviation scene, where he is currently an adviser to the GMR Airports group, which manages airports in India and overseas. GMR is partly owned by Aeroports De Paris. He is also a regional adviser to the Airports Council International (ACI) World Governing Board and special adviser to the ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Board.

His expected appointment comes at a time when Malaysia Airlines is facing pressure from passengers over recent flight disruptions that left them stranded at airports. On Aug 16, Izham came out to personally apologise to customers for the recent increase in flight delays and cancellations affecting services of Malaysia Airlines, Firefly and Amal, attributing a combination of factors, including weather, technical and manpower challenges, supply chain constraints and the ongoing normalisation of global aviation operations after the Covid-19 pandemic, to the operational difficulties. He said MAG had also been affected by the delayed delivery of its Boeing 737-800 aircraft this year.

On Saturday, MAG announced that it will need to temporarily reduce its network between now and December to execute corrective measures where needed.

On Monday, Transport Minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook was reported as saying that the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia, which regulates the safety, maintenance and security of Malaysian civil aviation, had conducted a special audit of Malaysia Airlines in response to recent disruptions involving its services, adding that the findings from this special audit will be presented to the Cabinet on Wednesday.

In a LinkedIn post on Monday, Shukor Yusof, founder and analyst of aviation research firm Endau Analytics, said MAG’s decision to reduce its network could result in a huge loss for the airline group in the financial year ending Dec 31, 2024 (FY2024).

“How much losses MAG will incur remain unclear at this stage, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests this could be in the hundreds of millions of ringgit. This means MAG will end its financial year deep in the red, despite having been cash positive for much of this year,” he said.

“Monetary losses aside, the reputational damage will also be significant, at a time when the airline has shown marked improvement in managing its standing in the industry post Covid-19," Shukor added.

MAG posted a net profit of RM766 million in FY2013 — its first annual net profit since the group was privatised in 2014.

Edited ByJenny Ng

Text Size