Jessica Plautz caught up with Malaysia Airlines:

• The carrier is now estimated to be losing $2.2 million a day as planes fly empty.
• The airline was unprofitable even before the twin disasters of MH17 and MH370.
• Malaysia Airlines has doubled the commission it offers to travel agents who book routes on their flights.
• It has also slashed prices – a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing costs $238. Other carriers charge over $500.
• If the airline has to shut down because of the crash it won’t be the first. Three years after flight 103 from London to New York was bombed in the 80s, the airline Pan Am went bankrupt.

See photos of the empty planes and terminals, and read more over here.

Source: Mashable

How much does it cost to find a missing jetliner? CBS News took a look:

• An exact figure is hard to come by since a lot of the costs – such as the cost of maintaining a ship or paying troops – would have to be paid anyway.
• The search effort has also been valuable training for those responsible for search and rescue operations.
• The US Department of Defense has allocated about $7.6 million to help with the search. So far it has spent $3.3 million.
• Australia is spending half a million dollars a day on one of its search ships alone. To say nothing of general administration and depreciation costs.
• Japan has an $8.8 million budgeted for emergency relief and it is believed that its costs are covered by this budget.
• Malaysia refuses to provide a figure.

Read more about some of the other costs that should be accounted for, how defense cooperation agreements affect costs, and more over here. The Times of India says that $44 million has been spent on the search.

Source: CBS News

Via: Slate

It’s been a year or so since Malaysia saw MH370 vanish without a trace. The country now has the opposite problem:

• Three Boeing 747s have been left abandoned at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
• Authorities have placed an ad in the local newspaper asking the owners of the planes to claim and collect the jumbo jets, as well as to pay accumulated parking charges.
• The owners of the aircraft might have left the planes behind because they had run out of money and had to shut down operations.
• This isn’t the first time this has happened in Malaysia – in the 90s an abandoned aircraft was turned into a restaurant.
• The planes are expected to be auctioned off if they are not claimed by December 21^st.

The full article includes the registration numbers of the planes, in case you think it might belong to you. Read the article here.

Read about the economics of searching for MH370 here.

Source: AFP, Yahoo News

The Economist took a look at state airlines:

• Even before the recent disasters Malaysia airlines was no different from most other state airlines in its struggles to be profitable.
• Countries got into the habit of keeping state airlines because they were believed to be an important part of a country’s transport infrastructure.
• However in an era of low cost carriers and competitive management, state backed carriers have failed to adapt.
• This is because they are usually run with political motives in mind. Government cronies are appointed to manage the carriers and planes are forced to serve unprofitable routes.
• They are also hamstrung with rules such as free rides for politicians.
• Meanwhile they face higher costs than other airlines as they are usually too small to negotiate good prices on aircraft.
• In addition to the bad press associated with firing thousands of workers, some politicians fear that shutting down state airlines will cause vital connection to other countries to disappear.
• However countries such as Switzerland and Belgium indicate that the absence of an airline does not harm a country’s prospects.

Read about the bailouts that debt ridden Italy had to provide its airline, why Greece’s Olympic airlines was forced to deliver newspapers, and why abandoning state airlines might make countries better connected to the rest of the world over here.

Source: The Economist

Google posted a list of top searches in the year so far. Andrea Chang wrote:

• Kim Kardashian didn’t break the internet this year, Robin Williams did, whose name was the #1 search of the year.
  • Perhaps hoping that Google knew where misplaced a jumbo jet, Malaysia Airlines came 4th on the list.
• The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge which we will soon be able to refer to as “so 2014” was #5 on the list.
• To the frustration of parents everywhere “Frozen” came #9 on the list.
• The Football World Cup was more popular than the Winter Olympics.

The full list is:

1. Robin Williams
2. World Cup
3. Ebola
4. Malaysia Airlines
5. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
6. Flappy Bird
7. Conchita Wurst
8. ISIS
9. Frozen
10. Sochi Olympics

Read other insights, and check out how the most popular searches differed in the US, and see other people who trended over here.

Source: LA Times

This year has seen several tragic air disasters. Keith Bradsher wrote about the airline insurance industry:

• Malaysia Airlines has a $2.25 billion overall liability policy. Airline insurance policies normally come with clauses that limit the amount that is paid out for search and rescue costs – but Malaysia Airlines’ policy does not come with any such clause.
• Given the millions that governments are spending searching for the missing MH370, Malaysia Airlines (and thus its insurers) might be asked to pay for some of the costs.
• The loss of MH370 has triggered a partial insurance payment under the “war risk” policy pending confirmation that the crash was not a result of intentional suicide or criminal action.
• Insurers will sometimes prohibit airlines from flying over dangerous regions but no such directive seems to have been issued on the route MH17 had taken over Ukraine.
• In addition to the loss of two Malaysia Airlines planes, and the crashes in Taiwan and Mali, insurers will also be on the line for planes damaged in the shelling of Libya’s main airport, and the Taliban’s attack on Pakistan’s main airport in Karachi.
• It is estimated that so far this year insurers have paid out $600 million in payments. The industry as a whole collects about $65 million a year in premiums.

Read more over here.

Source: The New York Times