Malaysia Airlines pushes for cultural reform - Mueller

A quiet transition is taking place within Malaysia Airlines Berhad (MAB) compared to a “big-bang type”, said its chief executive officer Christoph Mueller.

As a move to change the company’s work structure, meetings have been held between the workers and former union leaders,Mueller told The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH).

Mueller said MAB has long been a management which was “very hierarchial” in structure with ‘a lot of layers’.

“So there are a lot of layers. Information is not travelling as fast as you wish upstream and downstream,” he told the daily.

He said he believed in engaging with the union and working as a team.

"I said you might be surprised but I would like you to elect work councils in December this year. I have in mind that we work less hierarchical and more as a team," he told SMH.

He said the MH370 and MH17 tragedies were "a morale setback"and admitted about the decline in ticket sales.

He said the drop in ticket sales are predominantly in China and Australia.

"Australia is unfortunately heavily affected by MH370 mainly from the fact that the search is conducted out of Perth. That really clutters the social media, such that in the meantime you have a correlation of ticket demand to social media posting. It flares up, sales go down," he said.

"In China, it is also overlaid by a certain form of superstition that is very difficult to cope with," he added.

Mueller has 25 years of experience under his belt, making him one of the most suitable candidates for the job which has been dubbed as one 'of the toughest CEO jobs' in the world.

He was also instrumental in the turnaround at Germany’s full service airline, Lufthansa from 1994 to 1999.

MAB had earlier this year retrenched 6,000 staffs in its efforts of restructuring the company, besides the routes rationalisation and renegotiating of the supply contracts.

These measures are part of MAB's recovery plan after the government had spent RM19.2 billion between 2001 and 2014, to save Malaysia Airlines due to the failure of its privatisation in the 1990s.