I strongly believe it is the best interest for all Sarawakians for the the Premier Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari and the Sarawak Government to be accountable with their intention to set up a boutique airlines especially to be transparent with the total cost of whole project, parties involved, economic feasibility and sustainability study, and cost-effectiveness analysis as this may have a big impact to the economic safety and long-term economic sustainability of Sarawak.
While I am supportive of what is good for Sarawak especially to find ways to improve connectivity and stabilise tickets prices into Sarawak, i express some reservationsil on the idea of setting up Sarawak’s own airline, as it may not be sustainable and economically feasible and will come at a huge economic cost to Sarawak.
Even though the Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has agreed in principle to a proposal, i believe it is of best interest of all Sarawakians to be made more aware of the details especially since running an airline business is very tough, on top of being highly regulated in terms of organisational structure, passenger safety regulations, specialty, and other aviation requirements.
This decision may cost a lot of public funds to set up, let alone find it tough to sustain the business model and maintaining the assets as Sarawak may not have the economy of scale to keep it sustainable. If they were profitable, I am sure the other airlines would have taken advantage of it and provided more of such routes into and out of Sarawak.
We do not want to see after a period of time, the Sarawak will have no choice but to use huge sum of our public funds to bail out the airlines to keep it afloat as it cannot remain sustainable.
I still believe the better option is to find ways with existing private national and private airlines to improve connectivity, especially domestic routes within Sarawak by offering incentives and even subsidies rather than take on a whole airline company which requires high investment, high cost and high expertise which may not be beneficial especially on the long term.
In principle, it should not be the business of the government to be in business. Their role is to provide a conducive environment and ecosystem for business to thrive or find ways to incentivise private sector to come up with good and sustainable business plan for the people, rather than trying to start their own airlines.