Malaysia Airlines names new COO

Malaysia Aviation Group (MAG) announced the appointment of Captain Izham Ismail as the new chief operations officer of Malaysia Airlines Berhad (MAS), effective 1 November.Captain Izham served a short stint as CEO of MASwings and is now replaced by Aminuddin Zakaria, according to a statement by MAG. In fact, Captain Izham is no stranger to the new role, having served as its director of operations from 2012 to 2015, said MAS' group CEO Peter Bellew."With close to 36 years of experience in the aviation industry, and having just completed the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School, I am confident that he will be able to lead the operations and engineering division to new levels of excellence. Being our own internal home grown talent, I look forward to working closely with him in delivering operational excellence to the entire group,” Bellew added.Captain Izham began his career with MAS as a trained pilot from the Philippines Airline Aviation School and has operated various aircraft from the Fokker 27, Airbus 330 to the Boeing 747.He has served various management roles such as head of operations (programme management office), executive vice president of flight operations and general manager for technical and development. He also currently serves on the board of director for various companies such as Hamilton Sundstrand Malaysia, MAB Kargo, MAB Academy and MAS Awana.On the other hand, Aminuddin, who is now CEO of MASwings - began his career at Malaysia Airlines as its trainee of aircraft maintenance. He spent the next 12 years performing a variety of roles before moving to GE Aviation for the next 14 years, with his last position as regional sales director for Asia Pacific. He re-joined Malaysia Airlines in 2012 as senior vice president of airline engineering and was appointed as head of technical operations in September 2015.Bellew said he is certain that Aminuddin, who has over 27 years of professional experience in the engineering field, will be able to develop a comprehensive and sustainable plan to improve MASwings’ operations, financial performance and customer service experience, "The Group remains committed towards advancing this community airline serving rural air services in Sabah and Sarawak.”MASwings is serving a network of 24 destinations and operates 10 64-seater ATR 72-500, an advanced turboprop aircraft which connects Kota Kinabalu, Kuching, and Miri International Airports to major towns and cities in East Malaysia.It is also the sole operator serving the Rural Air Services routes in Sabah and Sarawak with six 19-seater Viking Air DHC6 400 Series Twin-Otter, operating out of Miri, said MAS.Read also: Malaysia Airlines kicks off global partnership with football giant Liverpool