Malaysia’s aviation-safety downgrade makes Asia the region with the most markets where airlines are restricted from US airspace.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Monday cut Malaysia to a Category 2 nation, banning the country’s carriers from setting up new flights to anywhere between New York and San Francisco.
It cited deficiencies by the nation’s civil aviation authority in areas ranging from technical expertise to record keeping.
Malaysia is the third Asian country branded with such a stigma — the others being Bangladesh and Thailand — underscoring the challenges regulators face in keeping up with fast-growing demand for flying.
Costa Rica, Curacao and Ghana are the only other markets worldwide designated as Category 2.
“The moment they hear Malaysia is Category 2 questionable safety, you have a lot of people start to wonder ‘oh, I don’t want to fly with Malaysian carriers,’” Maybank Investment Bank Bhd analyst Mohshin Aziz said.
The FAA assessment is based on International Civil Aviation Organization safety standards and focuses on the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia, not individual airlines.
It has been used to ban flights from India, Vietnam and Indonesia — although those markets have been upgraded to Category 1 in the past few years.
Malaysia now cannot open new routes to the US or code-share with US carriers.
It also means Malaysian aircraft will be more closely monitored at US airports, though only AirAsia X flies there — to Honolulu via Osaka.
The airline did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FAA’s designation could have far-reaching implications for a country that suffered through the 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and the downing of another flight over Ukraine.
Mohshin said it could turn public perception of Malaysian carriers negative, hurt the maintenance business, undermine the ability of local pilots and engineers from getting hired overseas, and drive up insurance premiums and leasing rates.
That point was echoed by Gerry Soejatman, a Jakarta-based aviation analyst, who also said the FAA’s decision could impact business travel as companies might restrict staff from flying Category 2 carriers.
In response to the downgrade, the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia said it “takes the FAA’s assessment constructively and has moved to make serious changes in its structure and operations.”
At an event in Jakarta yesterday, Malaysian Deputy Minister of Finance Amiruddin Hamzah said that the downgrade would be looked into, but it was unlikely to affect tourism, including increasing numbers of people traveling to Malaysia for medical treatment.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six