Finish what you started, Mueller
By Nufam, the National Union of Flight Attendants Malaysia
The National Union of Flight Attendants Malaysia (Nufam) wants outgoing Malaysia Airlines Berhad CEO Christoph Muller to stay on and finish what he started with the new airline.
Mueller cannot simply run away from what he started and abandon the rest of the airline’s crew.
The trust the country and people have in Muller to turn the national carrier back to profitability is tremendous as many had high hopes that Mueller could deliver on his promises. But now hardly a year into his service, Mueller is already leaving. This is utter rubbish and simply irresponsible as the airline is only now picking up the pieces.
How can Mueller leave the airline in mid service when taxpayers spent so much to bring him over to turn the airline around?
This is a heavy responsibility no doubt, but Mueller should have thought about it from the very beginning. Instead he promised everyone including the 6,000 employees who lost their jobs, that after the downsizing, MAS could be saved.
Khazanah Nasional is also partly to blame for this new predicament the airline is facing since it was they who said Mueller was the best airline person to save the national carrier. Now however, with a simple stroke of a pen, Mueller has issued a memo saying he is quitting.
Mueller must offer something better other than saying he is quitting for personal reasons. We can understand if it is for health reasons but all other reasons are unacceptable to us.
His proposal to drastically reduce the number of employees in MAB caused severe hardship to many who were terminated last year from MAS as many have now been left without a future. Leaving so soon is unacceptable, especially coming from an experienced foreigner who has claimed he achieved great success with other airlines in the past.
If Mueller wants to leave, he must finish the job he started first and prove to us he is worthy of what he was paid to do, failing which Khazanah Nasional must justifiably re-employ every single personnel terminated from the very day MAS was closed down. We lost many good employees all because of the management’s string of failures.
It is also unprofessional for a person of Mueller’s calibre to leave a sinking ship. What sort of captain is he?
The recent announcement of his quitting was a shocker to many in MAB as well as members of the public, who never expected this new MAB CEO to leave so soon, what more now leaving his duties to another person we hardly know.
Please do the honourable thing – stay on and finish your job, Mueller as many people have put their trust in you.
As much as we sympathise with the announcement, we Malaysians want the national airline success story back on the front pages of our newspapers. We have yet to see anything positive coming out since the day MAB was launched on September 1, 2015.
It has hardly been a year and Mueller is already bailing out for whatever reasons and only he, MAB’s management and Khazanah Nasional can provide us with some answers. You cannot wash your hands clean and walk away.
For now, the clock is ticking as there are many things still far from being accomplished at MAB and we urge Mueller to consider changing his mind and continue to deliver what he and his team promised the people of Malaysia and the airline’s 14,000 employees.
Nufam is the National Union of Flight Attendants Malaysia.
