Earlier this year, the government already gave the airline £97million, according to Airline Geeks. Back in 2014, scheduled international passenger flight 370 disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to Beijing. The crew of the Boeing 777 aircraft last communicated with traffic control around 38 minutes after takeoff when the plane was over the South China Sea.
Just minutes later the aircraft disappeared from radar screens but was tracked by military radar for another hour before flying westwards from its planned flight path.
Another incident that shook Malaysia Airlines in the same year was Flight 17 (MH17) which was a scheduled passenger flight travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
MH17 was shot down while flying over eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board.
Both tragedies had a huge financial impact on the airline leading Malaysia’s government to decide to rescue the company.
Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad has set up a recovery plan for the airline and now owns the carrier.
In response to over £244million worth of funding a spokesman for Khazanah said it is just a part of £1.3billion of funding under the recovery plan.
The airline was expected to break even in 2018 but did not achieve that goal.
However, Malaysia Airlines has decided to set a new goal to break even by 2022.
READ MORE: MH370: Does ‘secret’ clue prove co-pilot made distress call?
The airline’s CEO Izham Ismail said: “Notwithstanding an improvement in our Q1 operational performance in comparison to last year, we expect to remain extremely challenging.
“The competitive environment is expected to continue to tighten in 2019 given, driven by overcapacity in the region as well as domestic.”
However, the airline is now facing competition from low-cost airline Air Asia which was the only company to make a profit in Malaysia last year.
Malaysia Airlines owns a fleet of 81 aircraft and flies over 59 destinations.
The airline mainly serves countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
The captain of MH370 Zaharie Ahmad Shah came under scrutiny after the plane’s disappearance with suspicions being raised that data was wiped from his flight simulator.
The Boeing 777 is still missing to this day and exactly what happened to the plane is still a mystery.
But an official investigation concluded that it was likely at the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean.
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