Poor Malaysia. Poor MAS (Malaysian Airlines)! It is getting well known to the world all for the wrong reasons – all of them sad. Just less than five months ago, on July 8, Flight MH370 was strongly presumed as dived into the Indian Ocean. That Boeing 777 was on a trip from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing in China. The search for its whereabouts is still going on. In that calamity a total of 239 people went missing, presumably drowned in the ocean (I still hope and pray it is not true).
Now this. News is everywhere that a Malaysian Airlines Plane, Flight MH17, also a Boeing 777, on its way from Amsterdam, Holland to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia was, in the words of American Vice president Joe Biden, “was blown out of the sky” by surface-to-air missile launched in Ukraine. It is strongly alleged that Pro-Russian rebels shot it down on Thursday 17 thinking that it was a military transport plane belonging to Ukraine. 283 passengers and 15 crew members died in the mishap. How tragic!
People would now hesitate to travel by air and especially by Mas Planes. They may think that traveling by MAS planes could be a bad omen. Though this was not the fault of the MAS authorities it was just a bad coincidence that MAS had the misfortune to be involved in both the mishaps in just a so very short time, hence registering strongly a bad and disapproving impression in people’s minds.
Without the Malaysian government’s help the MAS Airlines would surely close down. One way for the airlines to get out of this predicament and doldrums and is to get the name MAS out of the people’s minds. MAS had been a good name. It came from the Malay word EMAS which means gold. But the golden airline is losing its shine fast if not lost already. Yes, change to a new name. It could be National Airways of Malaysia (NAM), Malaysian International Airlines (MIA) or just Air Malaysia or any other name at all, but not MAS. MAS would only remind the people of the MASS loss of human lives.
