Sound familiar? In the ASEAN region today, just like the U.S. a decade earlier, incumbent legacy carriers face the toughest operating conditions they’ve ever seen, with economies floundering, LCCs flourishing and (this was less of a problem for U.S. carriers) currencies fluctuating. None feels the pain more than Malaysia Airlines, which is no longer a publicly traded company. But not far behind is Thai Airways, which registered the worst operating margin of any still-publicly-traded full-service airline in the world last year. Can it, like its U.S. counterparts, rise from the ashes?
