IDRIS Jala has sent AirAsia Tony Fernandes a curt note withdrawing all discount privileges accorded by Malaysian Airline System, or MAS, to the budget carrier’s chief executive for two reasons. One, MAS employees hadn’t liked the repeated barbs thrown the national airline’s way by the AirAsia chief and two, MAS had fi - nally realised that Mr Fernandes could actually afford no discounts. Actually, Mr Fernandes could afford fl ying First Class all the time as he was a wildly wealthy man who owed all his success to steadfastly refusing air travellers’ free food. He was also a prudent businessman who thought extravagance was a word to describe how MAS spent its money. The businessman thought it was insane for people to want to streak through the skies in a pressurised metal tube so he fi gured that the least he could do was not give them free food while taking them for a ride. But he was a meticulous planner who constantly worried about the way his crew greeted passengers, reminding them not to say, “How high are you?” when they meant, “Hi, how are you?” Bumpy landings, he reassured his staff, was neither the pilot’s fault nor the co-pilot’s. Instead, “it was the asphalt”. Not to be outdone, Mr Idris ordered all lights to be dimmed during mealtimes as a crafty measure to accentuate the attractiveness of the meals and the cabin crew serving them. What they could not see, they could not curse, reasoned Mr Idris who abhorred any form of cursing himself because he knew that Heck was the place people went to when they didn’t say Gosh. “By Golly,” marvelled his admirers and their numbers were huge because they knew that no one loved air travellers – and their money – more than MAS and Mr Idris. Actually, he richly deserved the applause because he’d turned MAS from a carrier that consistently reported massive losses to a profi table one that was consistently Bullish on Bouncing into the Black. Indeed, if turnaround specialists were the salt of the earth, Mr Idris was the Dead Sea. Ong Tee Keat winced at the word “dead” and immediately thanked his lucky stars he wasn’t the Health Minister who was constantly being besieged by complaints that dead people were refusing autopsies because they’d realised after March 8 that they, too, had rights. In addition, the Health Minister was frequently tormented by the thought that somewhere out there were squads called “snoop” just waiting to fi lm him in a hotel room doing things that were no one else’s business. Yes, it was no fun being Health Minister, thought Mr Ong with satisfaction and then realised, with dawning horror, that his ministry was no bed of roses either. Instead, there was A War of the Roses going on between Messrs Idris and Fernandes while there was another RM4 billion-andstill- growing hole being conscientiously dug in the whole balance sheet that was the Port Klang Free Zone. “You think you’ve got problems?” cried Chan Kong Choy, the former Transport Minister who’d been shut out of the last election despite being the deputy president of a major component party. “What about me?” It was a good and pointed question from Citizen Chan who felt aggrieved about the shut-out but Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was equal to the task. “Shut happens,” he replied enigmatically and that was that. Messrs Idris and Fernandes shuddered in horror at the thought of shut skies and decided not to ratchetup their feud anymore, In fact, they even buried the ratchet. After all, they reasoned, they still had what it took to take what others had. ● S. Jayasankaran is the bureau chief of Singapore’s Business Times and can be contacted at sankaranjaya@yahoo.com

Source: Malay Mail – June 25, 2008