Malaysia Airlines Stirs Up Controversy, Bans Checked Bags to Europe

Peter Bellew, Malaysia Airlines’ chief operating officer, said in a phone interview Wednesday that even in hindsight, the carrier wouldn’t do anything differently.

All baggage is being shipped to affected customers in Europe.

From last night (Jan 5) until further notice, the airline would only be able to accommodate cabin baggage of up to 7kg – one piece totalling 7kg per Economy Class passengers and two pieces totalling 14kg (up to 7kg per piece) for Business/First Class passengers.

Due to a combination of strong headwinds and longer flight routes in effect since the downing of MH17, the Asian carrier is telling passengers flying from Kuala Lumpur to European destinations Paris and Amsterdam that they can not check baggage.

It banned checked-in baggage on flights to Amsterdam and Paris operated by its Boeing 777 aircraft.

Public relations disasters at Malaysia Airlines come with a lot of baggage. Routes were modified after the downing of one of its jets over a war-zone in Ukraine in 2014 killed all 298 people aboard. Others asked for a refund of their tickets.

On Tuesday, Malaysia Airlines imposed a temporary ban on checked baggage on certain flights to Europe, citing “unreasonably strong head winds” on the longer routes it was taking for safety reasons. “That’s been Malaysia Airlines’ problem in the last 10 years”.

The longer route ran south, over Egypt. Malaysia Airlines later changed the plan to fly over Iran for the first time since October, the carrier said in an e-mailed statement.

Barely months after losing two planes and 537 lives in successive air tragedies, the carrier ran a “My ultimate bucket list” contest for passengers before social media outrage forced it to jettison the campaign.

“Obviously that would also reduce the revenue an airline is making from that particular flight, but it’s not as if a headwind issue is a permanent situation”.

“It’s an operational measure to avoid conflict zones”, said Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of Malaysia’s civil aviation department. “The next update is expected at 0100GMT/0900 Malaysian local time”, it added.

Malaysia Airlines told AFP that they had no choice but to take these steps because “safety is our utmost priority” and the restrictions were “based on our risk assessment”.