LETTER | Are passengers protected from disgraceful airline operations?

LETTER | As air travel picks up after the pandemic-driven restrictions were lifted, Malaysians are going out in droves to visit places that had been beyond their reach in the past two years.

Starting this year, total passenger traffic rose six times in the first half of 2022 as compared to the corresponding period in 2021.

About 20 million passengers clocked in during the first six months of 2022, as per the reports by Malaysian Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB). Unfortunately, this huge increase in air travel brought about various issues and challenges which until today, did not appear to be rectified.

In fact, judging from several news reports the number of complaints is not only getting higher, but getting louder as well. This precipitated Mavcom to issue a statement chastising airlines to take heed of customers’ complaints, which appeared to have grown from merely 157 complaints in 2021 to 1,240 in the first half of 2022 alone.

“Flight rescheduling, flight cancellations, and online booking collectively contributed to 46.1 percent of total complaints filed," Mavcom said in their statement.

We have read so many instances where customers could not get any refund on flight cancellations, or refunds on vouchers have too many strings attached, multiple postponements and many more grievous incidences which had caused severe difficulties for the passengers.

However, this warning by Mavcom was not seriously taken by these airlines as we see these problems are not going away anytime soon. As one MP (Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh) said in Parliament a couple of weeks ago, he still received a myriad of complaints from the public and urged Mavcom to take action against airlines that caused such problems.

Malaysia Consumers Movement secretary-general Sukhdave Singh went a step further by implying that Mavcom appears to be ‘toothless’ in handling this situation. As per the Mavcom report, AirAsia received the highest number of complaints from January to June 2022, comprising 42.1 percent of total complaints followed by Malaysia Airlines with 40.7 percent and Batik Air with 7.9 percent.

Are passengers really protected from all these problematic and sometimes malignant business practices?

The icing on the cake would be the announcement made by Mavcom last month, that AirAsia was given a renewal of an Air Service Licence (ASL) for only a period of six months effective from Oct 1 to March 31, 2023. They must comply with specific conditions imposed by Mavcom by Dec 31, in order to get a further extension until Sept 30, 2023.

This news is indeed troubling as the customers are left in the dark as to what conditions AirAsia must comply with in order to get out of this probation period. Mavcom did not state this.

Are they operational? Are they about safety procedures? Are they financials? What would happen if customers are already buying tickets for travel beyond March 31, 2023, and AirAsia did not comply with any of Mavcom’s conditions?

Shouldn’t Mavcom issue a statement to assuage passengers’ worry? We implore the authorities to be serious in governing our air travel as we pray on a daily basis that no untoward incident will happen in the future.

The Transport Ministry seemed to be more relaxed than Mavcom when the most recent statement ever made by its minister regarding all these problematic issues was way back in May.

“The ministry and its agencies will continue to monitor all airline services to ensure the maintenance and technical procedures are not compromised,” Wee Ka Siong had said.

He added that the authorities have also reprimanded the airline company in question to ensure strict compliance with technical, economic and safety regulations and will not hesitate to take action against operators that fail to do so.

Mild reprimands and intense monitoring can only do so much if there is no political will to do what is right.

It is already October. We don’t see much confidence restored amongst the public. A new airline company - MYAirline - is said to start operations in the coming weeks as it received the Air Operator Certificate (AOC) last month. This permit is valid from Oct 1 to Sept 30, 2023.

We hope that MYAirline will not succumb to the usual problems which are plaguing other airlines. Teething problems could be expected but obviously, we as potential customers would not want these issues to prolong indefinitely, like what can be seen today in others.

Passengers have been affected for far too long now. When in previous decades customers can rely on the good service of airlines for the money we spent, now every time we are about to travel by air, it’s like throwing dice and wishing airlines will not make our lives difficult.

We as consumers really expect more from the authorities.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.