Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines were once one carrier that split in 1972
Its first flight in 1947 carried five passengers from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur in a small twin-engined plane called the Raja Udang. Over the next 25 years the airline changed its name three times as Malaya became Malaysia and Singapore left, until the two governments finally divided it into two national carriers.
Malayan Airways was incorporated in Singapore in October 1937 by a Liverpool shipping line, the Straits Steamship Company and Imperial Airways, though the war delayed paying passengers for a decade. Helped by BOAC and Qantas, it grew through the 1950s with DC-3s, Super Constellations and Comets, launching its first long-haul route to Hong Kong in 1960. It became Malaysian Airways when the federation formed in 1963, then Malaysia-Singapore Airlines after Singapore's separation in 1966.
The partners wanted different things. Singapore aimed at international routes; Malaysia needed a domestic network first. In 1972 Singapore took all the Boeing jets, most international routes and the headquarters, while the Malaysian side got domestic services and the Fokker turboprops. Both coveted the admired initials MSA: Malaysia swapped two letters to make MAS, and Singapore briefly considered calling itself Mercury Singapore Airlines before settling on SIA.
MAS started with 19 aircraft and expanded fast during the Malaysian boom of the 1980s, reaching 47 overseas destinations. In 1993 it became Southeast Asia's first airline to fly to South America, routing its Boeing 747s through South Africa. Profits proved unreliable. A record gain in 1996/97 gave way to losses through the Asian financial crisis, a brief recovery, then a RM1.3 billion loss in 2005 blamed chiefly on fuel costs and weak pricing and revenue management, even though its labour costs per seat were among the lowest in the region.
Low-cost rivals kept squeezing it. After heavy losses from 2011 it dropped routes such as Los Angeles and Buenos Aires, and between 2014 and 2015 it went bankrupt and was renationalised under a new, smaller entity. Today it flies across Asia, Oceania and Europe from Kuala Lumpur, with sister airline Firefly and cargo arm MASkargo.
Source: Malaysia Airlines
