I’m looking forward to a lively discussion with our line up of airline leaders from Asia. We are fortunate to have two of them joining us and there’s plenty to talk about!
Peter Bellew, CEO of Malaysian Airlines (MAS) is leading his company through a major turnaround after several difficult years including the tragic loss of two aircraft in 2014. He has a background with European Low Cost Carrier, Ryanair so I’ll be asking him how that experience helps him at MAS.
The airline is sharpening up on its product and network and is seeing improved financial performance too. It saw a 90% load factor for the month of December, the highest for some time. It also has some interesting plans to use the large capacity of its Airbus A380 aircraft for a new subsidiary focussing on Hajj and Umrah religious traffic, definitely something I want to learn more about.
Philippine Airlines (PAL) has a long and proud history and under President and COO Jaime Bautista it has achieved a significant turnaround to restore profitability. It’s going to be fascinating to find out how this has been achieved. PAL is a key airline in the Gulf, not least due to the significant Filipino diaspora in the region. It operates Airbus A330’s with an amazing 400 plus seats to meet the demands of this vast community scattered around the globe. Having said that, the airline is reviewing its position in the region so I’ll be asking the reasons behind this and looking to learn more about his vision for the future.
This is going to be an interesting session and I hope I’ve whetted your appetite for some Asian airline flavours!