After the heart-wrenching fatality of Malaysia Airlines MH17, things are looking far from great for the airliner. According to Mohshin Aziz who is an aviation analyst at Kuala Lumpur-based Maybank, “The outlook is very dire.” He also fears that Malaysia Airlines won’t make it beyond this year, considering all that’s been happening.
Their financial situation has taken a steady decline and they have been making losses that no airliner would want to. For the first quarter of 2014, Malaysian Airlines was reported a net loss of 443 million ringgit and that’s a whopping 59% increase as opposed to the previous year. The airliner also suffered a 40% loss of its market value during 2014.
“Traditionally, the first half is always weaker compared to the second half following the heavy travel period of the previous year-end holidays,” said Ahmad Jauhari Yahya who is the Malaysia Airlines Group CEO. “The net loss this first quarter is not unexpected. However, the results were made worse with the impact on air travel in general following the disappearance of MH370. The whole market has reacted by slowing down demand.”
According to Bloomberg, Malaysia Airlines is likely to suffer for catastrophes that’s happened during this year and is likely to have its days end as a public traded company. In Ukraine, villagers speak of their experience of having bodies dropped from the sky and onto the streets and houses like dumbbells as the ill-fated MH17 plane disintegrated in the air while making its way down to the ground. Valeny Vodnev, 50, recalled being in his home when he heard two booming noises. What he thought was an attack by Ukrainian armed forces but instead it was a plane that exploded and bodies falling from the clouds.
“I started to count … one, two, three, four, five … seventeen, then I lost count. Bodies were falling everywhere,” he told The Star when interviewed at his village. Valeny said that the first body he saw falling was near the village’s entrance and was of a Caucasian man. “It (the body) broke into a shape I cannot describe,” he said.
Part of the plane’s cockpit missed many houses but hit an abandoned orphanage which was located nearby.
Nikolai Kovannyi, 45, recalled a devastating experience of seeing a body of a woman with another body, which might have been her young son. “The baby was caught among the branches of a tree and his body was not broken. His mother … it could have been his mother … fell on the ground. They were not far from each other,” he said while being reluctant to describe much else.
Marina Volkova, 45, remembered being in her house when she heard two booms and then something fell on to her roof. Her husband went rushing out and came back in, shocked. Her husband informed her of how a body had fallen and broke in two just at the edge of their house’s front door. “Human life is too important, no one should have died this way,” she said crying.
Villagers have shown their respect by printing out pictures of the dead, placing candles and soft toys to remember this very unfortunate tragedy. The site has been cleaned since and all bodies have been removed.
