Former Malaysia Airlines engineering division deputy director Sitham Nadarajah called for a thorough investigation to determine how the airline got into its current situation, which he described as disheartening.

He attributed it to a lack of proper planning, drawing comparisons with how the national carrier was managed decades ago during its “golden era”.

“It is really sad and disheartening that technical incidents and disruptions are taking place at an unprecedented level, happening on various fleets.

“These issues have to be addressed as soon as possible.

“Indeed, global airlines are facing challenges but (Malaysia Airlines) should have been better managed with proper planning.

“Resource constraints were also experienced by other airlines but they managed with proper planning,” Sitham said at a webinar titled “Navigation turbulence: lessons from Malaysia Airlines’s golden era” this evening.

Sitham said the national carrier was at its prime from the 1970s to the 1990s when the airline moved in a unified direction.

“With proper planning, we built proper maintenance facilities, trained people accordingly, developed engine overhaul capabilities … We literally did all the work in-house.

“The 1970s to the 1990s were truly Malaysia Airlines’s golden era. We did not build an airline — we built a national carrier that became well-known,” he said.

Frequent flight delays and cancellations over the past few weeks have prompted the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia (CAAM) to reduce the validity of Malaysia Airlines’s air operator certificate from three years to one year.

The airline’s parent company, Malaysia Aviation Group, has also scaled back routes due to service disruptions, saying global shortages had affected delivery of new aircraft orders as well as engine repairs and overhauls.

Last month, the transport ministry ordered the airline to furnish a monthly report on the implementation of a mitigation plan concerning its operations.