Twenty-eight days in, the war began: Malaysia Airlines’ CEO on fuel shocks, full planes and the India bet

MUMBAI:Nasaruddin A Bakar, president, and group CEO of Malaysia Aviation Group, took charge just before before the West Asia crisis began. Seven months on, he talks to the Times of India about running a thin-margin airline through a crisis, why India matters more than ever and what happens when the visa-free window closes.Nasaruddin A Bakar had barely found his CEO chair at Malaysia Aviation Group when the world’s most important aviation corridor shut down.“Twenty-eight days after I sat in the seat, the war started,” the group CEO says, with the dry humour of a man who has since had time to reflect on it.The West Asia crisis that erupted at the end of February did what such conflicts do to airlines. It closed airspace, stranded passengers, and sent fuel prices soaring. Eight months on, fuel prices are nowhere near cooling. For the new CEO, the first month was about survival and logistics rather than strategy.“The first two weeks were about how we manage three things: our people over there, our passengers over there, and our assets in the Middle East,” he says. He spent much of that time with his team, trying to understand what was happening on the ground.

The fuel bill nobody budgets for

“War happens every time. What strikes an airline most is when the fuel price goes up, and in those first forty days or so of the war, it was very critical.”He puts numbers on it. Fuel typically accounts for about 40 per cent of Malaysia Airlines’ total operating cost. During the conflict, that share rose to nearly 55 or 56 per cent.For an airline already operating on slender margins, that is a brutal swing. He said the margin across the Asia-Pacific region averages only about 2 per cent. “If you sell $100, you only make $2 in profit. When something happens in some part of the world, that margin is gone.”The Gulf’s loss was Kuala Lumpur’s gain, at least for a while. With the Middle East hubs disrupted, travellers who would normally have connected through the Gulf looked for other routes. Many of them, especially those travelling between Australia, New Zealand and Europe, turned to Southeast Asia.“Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, in particular, saw a big increase in demand, and we increased our frequencies and our flights into London,” he says. Load factors on those flights touched 95, 99 and even 100 per cent.That surge has since cooled. Demand plateaued around June or July, he says, because many of those who wanted to move had already done so. It is still strong, though. Loads to Europe remain in the high 80s to around 90 per cent.

India: The market that keeps filling up

This is the first time in over two decades that he has visited Mumbai. Last time around, he had flown in as a pilot-in-command. When asked about the purpose of his visit, he said: “India is one of the biggest economies in the world, and I think India is the right market to go to.”The numbers back him up. Malaysia Airlines operates about 80 flights a week to India, including 12 a week to Chennai, and flies to ten Indian destinations, among them both metros and second-tier cities. The airline carried about 1.3 million passengers on its India routes in the first half of 2025. Passenger growth in India is running at roughly 11 per cent year on year, and by the end of July the airline had already flown close to one million passengers on its India routes this year, he said.The planes are almost full. “Fortunately, or unfortunately, our load factor is right to the brim now.” Loads on India routes average around 93 per cent. He cites 93 per cent in Chennai, 91 per cent in Mumbai and 91 to 92 per cent in most other cities, which he says makes India one of the highest-loading foreign markets in the network.How much of that traffic is bound for Malaysia? About 70 per cent of passengers from India travel onwards through Kuala Lumpur, and only about 30 per cent fly point to point. Most of the onward traffic is headed to Australia, mainly Sydney and Melbourne, with a smaller share going to Japan and very little to China, he said.That makes KL a hub in the true sense of the word, a role Capt Nasa is keen to push. “Kuala Lumpur is the fourth most connected hub in the world, ahead of Singapore and Bangkok,” he said. OAG data released in Sept put Istanbul airport at the first place globally with connections to 337 destinations worldwide, followed by London Heathrow and Amsterdam Schiphol in the third place. Kuala Lumpur retained its fourth position and remains the most connected airport in Asia, with destinations served increasing to 154.

Bilaterals and poor inbound traffic from Malaysia

The imbalance in India-Malaysia passenger traffic is stark, too. By his estimate, about 750,000 Indians travel to Malaysia, against roughly 200,000 Malaysians going the other way. That lop-sidedness is one reason capacity is hard to add. India’s bilateral air services agreement caps what each side’s carriers can fly, and Malaysia Airlines shares its Malaysian quota with AirAsia and Batik.“Our work, through our government, is always about asking whether we can get more bilateral arrangements,” he says. “The process is ongoing, and we have asked many times.” He says he understands the position on both sides.

The visa-free question

Much of that growth in outbound traffic from India to Malaysia has come with a tailwind: Malaysia’s visa-free regime for Indian travellers. It is due to lapse in December. He did not comment on whether it will be extended. “Our government-to-government relationship between Malaysia and India has been very strong, and I believe the visa-free arrangement benefits both countries.”Malaysia has declared 2026 as Visit Malaysia Year, and the airline’s own targets look to the same horizon. “We are looking at maybe two to three million tourists from India alone this year, across all carriers,” he says. For an airline whose Indian planes are already nearly full, that number may be as much a message to the Malaysian government as a forecast.

Profit, and the six-month check

In April, the airline announced a profit of USD 34 million for 2025, roughly double the previous years. The CEO’s message back then was celebratory but cautious. He warned about volatility and geopolitics.So, six months on, which pressures have turned out to be more persistent or more severe than expected? The CEO said the first two months of the year were profitable and strong, financially, and operationally. Then he moved quickly to what he considers the airline’s real achievement. Its on-time performance is running at 92 to 94 percent. “We are not only ensuring that we fly from A to B. We are selling an experience.”He is clear-eyed about the ambition behind that. Malaysia Airlines now ranks 21st on Skytrax, up from 26th, and he wants it in the top ten within four years. “Can it be achieved? Obviously, it can.”

The fleet is the bottleneck

The more stubborn problem is supply. The airline ordered 95 aircraft three years ago and has received 29 so far. Another 66 are due over the next four years. Delays of three to five months are routine.“I don’t see the supply chain being resolved in the next five years, at least,” he says. “I’m praying so hard for that, but looking at the trend, it might even take longer.”For a small airline, the cost is high. Malaysia Airlines has already sold about 25 percent of its 2027 seats, he said. “If a flight is delayed by three months, a small airline like us has a big problem,” he says. He is frank about the manufacturers. “We’re trying our level best, and the manufacturers say they are doing theirs, but to me their level best is not good enough.”The average age of the fleet is 10.3 years. He wants to bring it down to 5.7 by 2030, since about 75 per cent of the new order is replacement and only a quarter is growth. A decision on long-range widebody aircraft is expected within a month or two.“We should be announcing our white body replacement maybe next month or before year end, the replacement of our A350 aircraft, which is about nine years old today,” he said.When asked whether a passenger flying in 2030 can be sure of a fresh cabin, he declined to promise. “Nothing is certain. You will always have some aircraft that are ten years old. But I’m talking about the average.”

Premium, food and crew

Capt Nasa describes the airline’s long-term business plan, now in its third edition, as resting on four pillars: being a premium carrier, building partnerships, achieving operational excellence, and strengthening its non-airline businesses. Traffic isn’t the only goal. “We want to be known as a premium carrier, so everything we do is about driving premiumness, not just traffic.”On the customer side, he narrows it to three things. The first is the cabin: new aircraft and, as importantly, cabins that work well.The second is food. “Malaysians love to eat, and Indians love to eat too,” he says. He has added 30 menus in the last nine months, and the flight he took to India the day before the interview was serving an Indian menu. The airline will also build its own catering facility, with ground-breaking in July, to produce around 60,000 meals a day by 2028, selling the surplus to other airlines.When told that a passenger flying on a Malaysian carrier might prefer Malaysian food, he conceded the point but said the airline’s own analysis shows that most customers want something familiar. So Indian food it is.The third is hospitality. “Malaysia Airlines’ cabin crew have won a world’s-best award seven times, and this year they are ranked third on Skytrax,” he said. The airline last topped the list about 18 years ago, and he believes it is on a path back to number one.

Selling the stopover

Because most Indian passengers are in transit, Malaysia Airlines has a product to coax them off the plane: the bonus side trip. A traveller who stops in Kuala Lumpur gets a free ticket to a second destination, a domestic destination.“Say you are going to Japan. The price flying direct is one figure and the price through Kuala Lumpur is another, but we say, come through us and I will give you one ticket free to Langkawi.”The offer has grown from six destinations to eight, including Kuching, Penang, Johor Bahru and Langkawi. It was introduced two or three years ago and is aimed at leisure travellers rather than corporate ones, who want to get to Australia, Japan etc directly, he said. The share of passengers who use it is small though, but it helps to sell, he added.On pricing, he insists the airline competes on something other than fares. “It is important for us to sell the experience. It is not about the price.” Dynamic pricing, he adds, means early buyers can find fares cheaper than some competitors.

Lessons from the pandemic

“The learnings that we got from COVID is this. As an airline, you cannot put everything under one basket. So, when we restructured the company in 2023, we diversified our businesses. We’ve got airline business, we’ve got non-airline businesses, we want to be strong and to be resilient in our non-airline businesses,” he said. From the Indian market point of view, the airline sees cargo and MRO businesses as strong segments.With around 18,000 aircraft backlogged at manufacturers, airlines are extending leases, and that means more heavy checks, he said, adding that no Indian airline sends aircraft to Malaysia Airlines’ MRO arm today. But he sees it as a chance, since the group works on both Boeing and Airbus. When told, India has long complained about losing maintenance business abroad, his answer was diplomatic: “To me, the cake is so big that everyone can have a portion.” Cargo and MRO are two of the group’s six non-airline businesses, along with loyalty, catering, ground handling and a training academy.

Partners in code-share

Malaysia Airlines has a codeshare with IndiGo on six Indian domestic points and a joint business agreement with Singapore Airlines. It is also a Oneworld member, though that alliance has no Indian carrier. The CEO did not have passenger numbers for the IndiGo tie-up. “In terms of the number, it is steadily improving. It is not there yet, but we need it, we want it to be much better.”IndiGo’s push into long-haul does not worry him unduly. Thirty or forty years ago, he notes, Southeast Asia and India had only six or seven airlines, and now there are more than 50. “Competition is stiff, but the market has grown a lot.” He expects the Asia-Pacific region to grow six to seven per cent a year for the next 20 years, against about four per cent globally. “Of course, it is a concern to us. Even though the market is big, we have to be very smart.“

A smarter airline

Technology, too, is on his list, as is with most airline CEOs. About 75 per cent of customers now start their search on Google or an AI tool, and about 20 percent of those convert into a ticket, he said. Malaysia Airlines runs 49 AI platforms across its operations, from flight planning to disruption management. Citing an example, he talks about rebooking disrupted passengers, where the system can use customer data to decide who goes on which flight, such as sending someone bound for London directly rather than through KL.