If you live in Malaysia or Singapore and travel frequently, most likely you have taken flight of both Malaysian and Singapore airline. As the name indicated, one belongs to Malaysian company and another to Singaporean.

This year I have a few chances to travel back and forth united states via both airlines. I travel to Texas, through both airline, the stops are differents. MAS stops in Taipei, Los Angelas and the subsequently reach Dallas, Texas. While for SIA, The flight will stop at Hong Kong, San francisco and then Dallas.

While both airlines offer good in flight service in this international route, however there are also many things our Malaysia airline so lacked behind to it’s competitors..

Flight Experience

First of all, when entering the SIA aircraft, I find the aircraft condition is so much better than that of MAS, I won’t go into compare different type of aircraft make as MAS is using Boeng while SIA is using Airbus. However at first look, SIA gives a cleaner look, probably the interior is better maintained with neat cushion upholstery, and comfortable mood of lighting.

Besides, there are many little extra seat features provided by SIA. anyone who used to travel long distance would find these little things add up to a lot of values. Things like, a much bigger LCD screen, a USB port  to charge handphone or PDA, additional seat pockets to put your stuff like wallet, passport, handphone, Ipod, etc. More head room so you don’t feel clautrophobic (Different aircraft configurations). You can’t find this in MAS.

Food menu wise, in my opinion SIA offers higher value meals. Aside from those very normal choices like chicken, fish or beef dishes, they do have things like salmon salad, Hagendaz ice-cream, popsicle, variety of cocktail drinks, nothing very fancy, but as passenger I know these little things will keep me coming back, after all people do like extra goodies. While the best thing I have from MAS is the so-so cheese cake or probably the small savory peanut pack (which is also offered by SIA).

For in flight entertainment, SIA is much better as well. Not only the LCD screen is much bigger, it project clear picture as well. For I used to suffer on the small blurry picture when flying with MAS. Besides, i can safely say that choice of movies is double of what MAS offers. There are many other entertainment options which I have no time to explore, but there are people who do!

Pre-Sale Experience

Recently I have an unpleasant experience in MAS online reservation web site, for those who doesn’t know there is one, it is in a totally different URL which is difficult to locate through search engine, or it is rather confusing. I attempted a few times in completing the reservation but a few time my effort went to waste. And finally, I manage to make the reservation, after a few disgrunted phone calls that got no answer or not getting any helpful answer. I used up 2 days time to make a simple reservation.

Revenue Leakage

All These lead me to think, if not for MAS national carrier status, it would have gone down many years ago. First of all, I can see they lose so much potential revenue simply from their faulty online reservation system, not many customers are as patience as me, who is willing to try two or three times. In information age, if you can’t be effective in your online based system, you lose out to competitors. Airasia is a good of example of competitor with their effective online reservation system. It has never give me any trouble before, if it did, it would have served more than failing me, and i bet more than half of their revenue is also generated from online reservation! Being easy to use and effective system simply add so much convenience to customer thus providing value in service even before business is transacted. In case of MAS, Service value is already being minused before the ticket is even purchased!

Management Efficiency

This article is not just a rambling about bad service or food. In evaluating a company’s management effectiveness from stock investment point of view, this is how you can see their level of competitiveness: how effective is the company generating revenue (effective reservation system) , how good is their strategy in retaining customer (extra goodies here and there, more comfortable seat, etc). Is the company revoluting in economic downturn to stay competitive. During the recent downturn when a lot of European and US airlines gone down, MAS announcing losses, Airasia start to provide seat selection with a fee, while I could only notice MAS domestic flight cut cost by offering obviously cheaper food thus further reducing value of service.

 Airline is a very competitive industry, with fuel price soaring to new high. Beside increasing airfare, the airline should provide more value added service so the value of service won’t be diluted. Because if you can’t do it, there bound to be some one more efficient who can. When this day come, it will be the change of market leader.