KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 16): Walking through the current Malaysia Airlines Bhd (MAB) office at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang, one may be forgiven for thinking it is too simple to be the headquarters of our national carrier, according to the Edge weekly in its latest edition.

The magazine’s writer Kamarul Azhar wrote that MAB now occupies a building in the southern zone of KLIA, where the cargo and flight catering operations are located. The office is quite bare and overlooks the airport and cargo handling hub. There is no Malaysia Airlines corporate logo emblazoned on its walls or any expensive painting or carving decorating its interior. Its elevator does not even have a motion sensor.

The weekly in its cover story said the national carrier’s long-serving staff would certainly see the stark contrast between the new office and the old headquarters in the central business district in Jalan Sultan Ismail, KL.

The Edge said initially, there was a plan to build a new corporate building for MAB in KLIA but that was scrapped by its current CEO Christoph Mueller, who believes the building that MAB currently occupies is sufficient to support the airline’s administrative processes.

The magazine said Mueller felt that the money would be better spent on improving MAB’s products and the PSS (passenger service system).

A grand office probably does not matter much to Mueller at this moment; what is more important to him is that MAB has survived its worst wounds, it said.

“The patient has left the emergency room; we have stabilised the patient but he is still not able to walk alone without help,” the Edge quoted the German as saying, who has been in the hot seat for about nine months now.

It said the metaphor reveals his belief that there is hope on the horizon that the national carrier will recover and regain its shine after having been through very painful cuts, including almost a third of the workforce of the old company Malaysian Airline System Bhd (MAS) being let go. Also, the politically well-connected contractors were forced to renegotiate their terms in order to continue their business with the national carrier — a bold move that the past chieftains had not been able to execute.

Nonetheless, the cost-cutting could not have happened without the full support of Khazanah Nasional Bhd, which took the airline private at 27 sen per share. But whether or not the moves were the right ones will most likely continue to be hotly debated, said the weekly.

For details on how Mueller is charting the flight path for the national carrier, read the Edge edition for the week of Jan 18 – Jan 24 available at newstands now.

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