Malaysia Airlines to grow partnerships, increase codeshare traffic following cutover to Amadeus PSS

Malaysia Airlines has completed the migration to a new reservations system, marking another step in the flag carrier's transformation. The Amadeus Altea Passenger Service System will enable Malaysia Airlines to significantly enhance codeshare partnerships both within and outside the oneworld alliance.

Switching reservation systems and expanding the partnership portfolio is an important component of the new Malaysia Airlines strategy under group CEO Peter Bellew.

Mr Bellew has adopted a different approach to partnerships from that of his predecessor Christoph Mueller, who forged a landmark partnership with Emirates but decided to reduce the total number of codeshare partners significantly - concluding that several did not have sufficient volume to justify being maintained. Mr Bellew has been open to expanding the number of partnerships, including reactivating some of the approximately 10 codeshares that Mr Mueller decided to turn off.

At the same time, the Emirates partnership has turned into something much smaller than originally envisaged. Instead of relying heavily on Emirates, Malaysia Airlines now prefers to build a diversified portfolio of partners, including relationships with all three Gulf carriers.