{"id":19298,"date":"2014-07-22T23:03:07","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T06:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/?p=19298"},"modified":"2014-07-22T23:03:07","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T06:03:07","slug":"wake-in-fright-another-malaysian-airlines-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/blog\/2014\/07\/wake-in-fright-another-malaysian-airlines-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Wake in fright – Another Malaysian Airlines disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tim Harcourt*<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a frequent flyer, particularly
\naround the Asia Pacific region, I, like many, awoke to the horror of more bad
\nnews for Malaysian Airlines. This time Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 was
\nallegedly shot down over the disputed Ukraine-Russia territory while making its
\nway from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. This comes in the same year that the world
\n\u2013 particularly Australia \u2013 has been searching for MH 370 in the Indian Ocean
\noff the coast of Western Australia. Same country, same flag carrier, but a
\ndisaster of potentially even greater proportion in global terms.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But what does Malaysian Airlines
\ndouble disaster really mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first tragedy is human life of
\ncourse. Its early days but there have been reports that a large number of
\nDutch, Malaysian and Indonesian passengers on board who have lost their life.
\nAustralian Prime Minister Tony Abbott addressed the nation early this morning
\nto announce that 27 Australians were feared to have perished and offered his
\nsympathies to the families. Prime Minister Abbott had played a very public role
\nin announcing details of the search for the missing MH 370 whilst travelling in
\nChina \u2013 so he must be very surprised at how much impact Malaysian Airlines has
\nbeen having on his own media agenda. The Prime Minister had just steered the
\nabolition of the carbon tax through a dysfunctional Senate but still hasn\u2019t
\npassed his budget.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second tragedy is one of
\ngeo-politics. The world has been watching Vladimir Putin\u2019s stand-off with
\nUkraine in the ethnically Russian dominated east of the country but has thought
\nit could be hands off and narrow it to a regional dispute. Now this news puts
\nthe cat amongst the pigeons over was it shot down, who did it (the Ukrainians
\nor Russian separatists) how and why? Memories of Korean Airlines being shot
\ndown by the old Soviet Union comes flooding back. This latest incident now
\ndrags Asia and the world into the Ukraine.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The third question is more about
\neconomics. How will this affect Malaysia? How will it affect the ASEAN states
\nand the Asia Pacific more generally? Malaysian Airlines is Malaysia\u2019s national
\nflag carrier and like all flag carriers \u2013 its county\u2019s \u2018brand\u2019. Like the UK has
\nBA, Australia has Qantas, Malaysia has MAS and for emerging economies having
\nyour own airline is a mark of economic success. Now, MAS which was already
\nclose to bankruptcy before MH 370 went missing could be facing a knock-out blow
\nwith MH 17. This is a blow to Malaysian pride, ASEAN and the whole Asian region
\nwhich will have adverse effects on trade, investment, international education
\nand tourism. It harms Malaysia\u2019s economic diplomacy and its aspirations to be a
\nsignificant player in ASEAN, APEC and on the world stage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is it the September 11 of this
\ndecade? It\u2019s too early to speculate whether it could be a game changer of
\nglobal geo-politics and the international economy, but in terms of the Asia
\nPacific region, its Malaysia\u2019s blackest day.<\/strong><\/p>\n

*Tim Harcourt is the J W Nevile
\nFellow in Economics at the Australian School of Business, UNSW Australia in
\nSydney and author of The Airport
\nEconomist<\/em>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

www.theairporteconomist.com<\/strong><\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tim Harcourt* As a frequent flyer, particularly around the Asia Pacific region, I, like many, awoke to the horror of more bad news for Malaysian Airlines. This time Malaysian Airlines flight MH 17 was allegedly shot down over the disputed Ukraine-Russia territory while making its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. This comes in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":358,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/358"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19299,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19298\/revisions\/19299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.unsw.edu.au\/theairporteconomist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}