Grant was invited to attend the Malaysian Airlines oneworld joining ceremony & celebrations held in Kuala Lumpur. The event included presentations from Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, aka AJ, the CEO of Malaysian Airlines, Alan Joyce from Qantas and Bruce Ashby, CEO of oneworld plus a formal dinner after the tarmac formalities. Grant’s recorded lots of great content that should appear in future episodes of PCDU but, for now, he’s pretty tired after a busy few days in Malaysia and is joining Steve via Skype from the business class lounge at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA).
After reviewing the event, the boys play Grant’s interview with Bruce Ashby about the process of adding a new member, the next members likely to join and his views on the global airline environment. They also discuss Grant’s unrecorded chats with AJ and Alan plus his interview with a representative of Qatar plus one with the lead chef who is responsible for Malaysian’s signature satay and how they keep it tasting so good at altitude. There’s also the observation that Malaysian joining oneworld and Qantas being their mentor likely means that Red-Q is even more dead than it ever was.
Next, they quickly cover a couple of news items, including:
- The ACCC has approved Virgin Australia’s purchase of Skywest.
- The RAN’s Sea Kings are being converted into spares for other operators except for Shark 07 which is being retained at the RAN Museum in Nowra.