Fierce fighting in eastern Ukraine kept international investigators from the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on Sunday as a report said the troubled carrier may try to rebrand itself with a new name.
The government-controlled company will also seek to rebuild its tarnished business with cash from new investors, possibly including rival carriers, sources told The Telegraph newspaper.
The troubled airline is reportedly planning a “radical overhaul” in the wake of the July 17 missile attack on Flight MH17, which followed the still-unsolved March 8 disappearance of Flight MH370 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. A total 537 lives were lost in the unrelated incidents, and the company’s stock is down nearly 30 percent in the past year, according to Bloomberg.
Efforts to restructure its routes and boost profits by “outsourcing” unspecified work are already under way, The Telegraph reported.
The airline currently has 20,000 employees and carries about 50,000 passengers a day.
“There are several options on the table but all involve creating an airline fit for purpose in what is a new era for us, and other airlines,” the airline’s commercial director, Hugh Dunleavy, wrote in an op-ed for The Sunday Telegraph.
Dunleavy also called for the creation of a new “higher level of authority” to evaluate the safety of air-traffic routes, noting that Flight MH17’s path had been approved by Ukrainian authorities and Eurocontrol, which charts civilian flights through European airspace.
“This tragedy has taught us that despite following the guidelines and advice set out by the governing bodies, the skies above certain territories are simply not safe,” he wrote. “We are businesses, not [intelligence] agencies. And it is not reasonable for us to assess all of the issues going on in all of the regions of the world, and determine a safe flight path.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces mounted a major offensive against pro-Russia rebels Sunday in an effort to gain control over the area where the Boeing 777 was downed. Government troops encircled the key rebel stronghold of Horlivka, not far from the rebels’ headquarters in Donetsk, Ukraine’s National Security Council reported.
Russian state news agency RIA also reported that a column of Ukrainian military vehicles had entered Shakhtarsk, a strategically located town from which the government can cut rebel supply lines.
The combat forced a team of Dutch and Australian cops to postpone traveling to the MH17 crash site to search for evidence and additional victims’ remains.