虛浮不求實 改名無法挽救馬航大綱

Whenever a company suffers a setback or calamity, business school professors and management journalists lay out the lessons for other businesses.
每當一家公司遇到挫折或者災難，商學院教授和管理類新聞記者就會爲其它公司總結經驗教訓。

That was true for General Motors and its faulty ignitions (make sure employees who spot problems bring them to management’s attention) and Starbucks’ UK tax difficulties (don’t underestimate consumers’ ability to do you damage).
在通用汽車(General Motors)的點火開關缺陷（教訓是保證發現問題的員工將問題傳達到管理層）事件上是這樣，在星巴克(Starbucks)在英國遭遇稅務問題（教訓是別低估消費者給你造成損失的能力）的時候也是這樣。

But there does not appear much other companies can learn from Malaysia Airlines’ travails. Its twin disasters – one passenger jet lost and the other apparently shot down – are too unusual to generate advice for anyone else.
但是其它公司似乎沒辦法從馬來西亞航空公司(Malaysia Airlines)的困境中學到什麼。一架客機失蹤，一架客機則明顯被擊落，馬航遭遇的這兩起災難太不尋常，不能給其他人帶來什麼重要教訓。

It is hard to see what the airline itself can learn from the tragedies. The first is still unexplained. The second was not its fault. It was flying over a war zone, but so were other respectable carriers.
馬航自身能從這些悲劇中學到什麼也很難說。第一起事故至今還未查明原因。第二起事故錯不在馬航。馬航客機的確飛經戰區，但是其他優秀航空公司也這樣做。

Given these awful misfortunes, it is understandable that the airline is contemplating changing its name and starting again as something else.
考慮到這些可怕的不幸事故，也難怪馬航正在考慮更改公司名稱，以新的身份重新開始。

We can see how extraordinary Malaysia Airlines’ plight is by looking at the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s safety report.
看一看國際民航組織(International Civil Aviation Organisation)的安全報告，我們就能理解馬航的困境有多不尋常了。

In 2013, 3.1bn passengers took a scheduled international or domestic flight. Of those, 173 died in an accident. This year’s figures will be higher – there have been other fatal crashes, including that of Air Algérie in Mali – but they will still be a tiny proportion of passengers.
2013年，有31億名乘客乘坐國際或者國內的定期航班，其中有173人死於事故。今年的死亡人數會更高——除了馬航兩起事故以外，還發生了其他墜機事故，包括阿爾及利亞航空公司(Air Algérie)的飛機在馬裏墜毀——但依然只會佔乘客總數的很小一部分。But not even these statistics show how unusual the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 and the downing of Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine were.
但僅僅這些統計數字還不能說明馬航MH370航班失蹤和MH17航班在烏克蘭東部墜落有多麼不同尋常。

The vast majority of air accidents take place while aircraft are landing or taking off. Just 10 per cent of 2013 accidents happened mid-flight.
絕大多數飛行事故是在飛機降落或者起飛時發生的。在2013年發生的飛行事故中，僅有10%發生在飛行途中。

And while both Malaysian aircraft were Boeing 777 jets, turboprop planes are more likely to crash. As many as 46 per cent of aircraft accidents involve turboprops, even though they account for a far smaller percentage of the world’s commercial fleet than jets do.
馬航失事的兩架客機都是波音(Boeing)777噴氣式飛機，相比之下，渦輪螺旋槳飛機更有可能發生墜機事故。在世界商用飛機中，渦輪螺旋槳飛機所佔比例比噴氣式飛機要小得多，但前者發生的空難卻佔到了46%的比例。

There will be small lessons the airline industry can learn from Malaysia Airlines’ experience. They will have another look at how they communicate with customers after a tragedy. I was impressed, flying on Malaysia Airlines after its first disaster, to note that, rather than avoiding the subject, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, its chief executive, expressed his sorrow on the front page of the in-flight magazine.
航空業可以從馬航的事件中學到一些小小的經驗。他們應該反思在悲劇發生後怎麼和客戶溝通。在馬航的第一起災難發生後，我乘坐了馬航的客機，發現馬航沒有對事故避之不談，在飛機上的雜誌的頭版文章中，馬航首席執行官艾哈邁德•喬哈里•葉海亞(Ahmad Jauhari Yahya)表達了他的悲痛之情，這給我留下了深刻的印象。

As to the lessons on flights across war zones: as Hugh Dunleavy, Malaysia Airlines’ commercial director, wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, a central international body should determine what is safe, not individual airlines.
對於飛經戰區的飛機的經驗教訓是：就如馬航的商業總監休•鄧利維(Hugh Dunleavy)在《星期日電訊報》(Sunday Telegraph)上發表的文章中所寫的，應該由一個主要國際組織，而非個體的航空公司，來確立安全標準。

Malaysia Airlines appears to have suffered from two episodes of extreme misfortune rather than mismanagement (unless we discover something new about the lost aircraft).
讓馬航陷入困境的，似乎是這兩起極其不幸的事故，而非管理不善（除非我們發現失蹤客機的新信息）。

Yet its business is suffering. Bookings are down. “In this part of the world in Asia people are more superstitious so this works against them,” an industry executive told the Financial Times. It is not just in Asia; many others will hesitate before booking one of its flights.
然而馬航的業務正在蒙受損失。機票預訂減少了。“亞洲人更加迷信，所以這會對他們產生不好的影響，”一位行業主管告訴《金融時報》的記者。不只是在亞洲，其他地方的人在預訂馬航航班時也會猶豫不決。

So should Malaysia Airlines change its name? One person I expected to answer “definitely” was Paul Argenti, professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck business school who, over a decade ago, studied 40 years of name changes and found that the company benefited in every case.
那麼馬航是否應該改名？我認爲有個人應該會回答“當然”，那就是達特茅斯大學(Dartmouth)塔克商學院(Tuck business school)的保爾•阿根提(Paul Argenti)教授。十多年前，阿根提教授研究了40年以來公司改名的案例，發現每個案例中改名的公司都從中受益了。

He told me he expected to find the same results today. The reason was that a name change usually went along with a new strategy.
他告訴我，他認爲現在也會是同樣的結果。因爲改名的同時，公司通常也會採取一種新的發展戰略。

Malaysia Airlines needs one of those, and did even before its twin tragedies. The company has made net losses for the past three years. As with many large carriers, its long-haul operations are doing reasonably well, but its short-haul business is suffering because of competition from low-cost carriers such as AirAsia.
馬航需要一項新策略，甚至早在兩起悲劇發生之前就需要新策略了。在過去的三年中，馬航連年淨虧損。與其他許多大型航空公司一樣，馬航的長線航班業績相當良好，然而短線航班業務則因遭受來自亞洲航空(AirAsia)等廉價航空公司的競爭而表現不佳。

But Prof Argenti told me that he thought that, even with a new strategy, Malaysia Airlines was the one company he had come across that should not change its name. There would be no point. Its disasters were just too big.
可是阿根提教授卻告訴我，他認爲，即使採取新策略，馬航也是目前爲止他遇到的唯一一個不應該改名的公司。因爲改名毫無意義。馬航遭遇的災難太嚴重了。

What about Valujet, the US airline that, after a 1996 crash in the Florida Everglades, re-emerged, successfully, as AirTran? That was a US incident, Prof Argenti said. “This is a global story that everyone is following.”
那麼美國瓦盧傑航空公司(Valujet)的例子呢？1996年在佛羅里達大沼澤地發生墜機事故後，這家公司更名爲穿越航空(AirTran)，成功再次崛起。阿根提教授說，那是一起美國的事故。“馬航事件則是每個人都在關注的全球性事件。”

He is right. Whatever Malaysia Airlines becomes, people will remember what it was. It needs to fix its business and win back fliers’ trust. A name change won’t help.
他是對的。不管馬航改叫什麼，人們都會記得它曾經叫着什麼。馬航需要重整業務，贏回乘客的信任。改名起不了什麼作用。