KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia Aviation Group (MAG) says subsidiary Malaysia Airlines Bhd has lost engineers to Singapore Airlines' unit SIA Engineering Co Ltd (SIAEC) but not in "great numbers'.
MAG group managing director Datuk Captain Izham Ismail told Business Times that the national carrier had lost only 12 engineers to the Singaporean firm.
"Malaysia Airlines loses engineers to SIAEC? Yes, we do but not in great numbers as per the heavy chatters were chattering about," he told Business Times in an interview recently.
Talks about SIAEC poaching Malaysia Airlines' engineers began after the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia audit from June 24-28 revealed that 63 out of 411 qualified MAB Engineering Services staff had left the company since January this year.
SIAEC opened a maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility in Subang in September 2023 through its subsidiary, Base Maintenance Malaysia Sdn Bhd.
Recently SIAEC told Business Times that its recruitment activities in Malaysia had been conducted through open exercises to ensure a fair and transparent process that complies with local regulations and industry standards.
The company also said it was collaborating with Malaysian Institutions of Higher Learning such as ADMAL Aviation College and APR-Aviation Training Centre to train new talents in Malaysia.
Izham said it is important for aircraft engineering companies, including Malaysia Airlines, to generate new talents to support the job demand as more international MRO players set up base in the country.
He said the new talents would also hinder airlines and MRO companies from taking engineers from each other, creating a domino effect that would not be a win-win solution for all parties.
Malaysia Airlines is working with a number of technical schools in Malaysia to train new aircraft engineers and technicians every year.
"We churn out in a year roughly about 60 to 70 engineers, technicians about 100. That is our planning for attrition, retirement and so forth," Izham said, adding that currently his aim is to reset the engineering division in Malaysia Airlines to give it a fresh start where productivity is incentivised.
He said he took it upon himself to reset 82 major things in Malaysia Airlines' various divisions when he was named as MAG's group managing director.
Some of the changes include catering as Malaysia Airlines ended its two-decade contract with Brahim's Food Services Sdn Bhd, pilots and cabin crew, commercial and finance, among others.
"My number one priority that I'm doing is resetting. I've reset a lot of the parts of the business," Izham said, adding that the engineering division is bogged by a 40-year culture that is the hardest to change in the airline.