He says, "Malaysia Airlines was slated to be profitable in 2018 or 2019 as part of the turnaround plan to turn Malaysian Airlines System to Malaysia Airlines Berhad. It was never a realistic target, because the restructuring and transformation crafted by Khazanah didn't take into account the fundamental problems, the technical issues, and the cultural issues that plagued Malaysia Airlines for a long time." Khazanah's search, however, didn't stop the media from bandying around, in September and October 2019, foreign carriers such as Japan Airlines and Qatar Airways as parties interested in the carrier. Air France-KLM came up as a possible candidate in January, prompting the Franco-Dutch airline group to issue a statement on 22 January to state it was "not a current party to the sales process". However, the group confirmed that it "had previously been in contact with Malaysia Airlines' shareholders". So far, two non-airline groups had expressed their interest to acquire Malaysia Airlines.