KUALA LUMPUR, April 6 ― The disappearance of MH370 may not paralyse Malaysia Airlines (MAS), its former managing director and chief executive officer Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahman said, but the flag carrier cannot afford to rest on its laurels when trying to regain public trust after the disaster.

In an exclusive interview with Malay-language daily Berita Harian, Abdul Aziz, who was with the company for more than 20 years before retiring in 1992, said MAS has no room for mistakes as the world has trained its eyes on the company.

“MAS will now have to rebuild public confidence and strengthen its existing services. Do not be complacent and increase campaigning efforts to improve its image.

“It is not a good financial situation MAS now but they can restructure the company,” he said.

Prior to the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200ER on March 8, MAS, one of Asia’s oldest flag carriers, was bleeding red ink and struggling to operate on a loss for three consecutive years.

A turnaround plan meant to steer the airline back to black produced less-than-satisfactory results amid intense competition from low-cost carriers in the region, while efforts to lower prices to fill up the planes were done at the expense of profits.

Blame has been heaped on alleged government interference in the airlines business, poor management and even unions for MAS’s losses, which was not long ago described as a national carrier in “crisis”.

In 2011, MAS recorded a record RM2.5 billion ringgit in losses. Last year, the flag carrier struggled through four successive quarterly losses.

Abdul Aziz, who was cautiously optimistic of the company’s future, said there is no need for a total rebranding of the company but it should step up efforts to improve the company’s image.

“With this incident, it will not disable MAS and the incident is not intentional, this is called an accident and it can happen to anyone or any other airline.

“MAS has to find a way and work hard to ensure there is no negligence.

“Show the world that MAS is a professional company and is able to handle any crisis and at the same time, maintain business as usual without any mistakes,” he was quoted as saying.

The MAS flight MH370 first dropped off radar screens nearly a month ago on March 8, in what global experts have continued to label as one of the most baffling aviation mysteries in history.

The Boeing 777 aircraft, described as one of the safest plane to fly, was carrying 239 people to Beijing when it disappeared some 120 nautical miles off the coast of Kota Baru in Kelantan.

Today, 30 days on and scores of false leads and missteps later, the hunt for MH370 continues.

Yesterday, a Chinese patrol ship picked up a pulse signal in the southern Indian Ocean at a frequency consistent with that of an aircraft black box.

However, it has not been established whether the ping is related to the disappeared Flight MH370.

In a statement here, Australia's Joint Agency Coordinating Centre (JACC) said the pulses picked up yesterday by the Chinese vessel Haixun 01, still "cannot be verified at this point in time".

A day's worth of battery life is said to be left on MH370's black boxes, and if at all the pulses had come from the aircraft's recorders, they will likely fade by tomorrow.

Experts have weighed in with positive opinions on the likelihood that it was indeed MH370's black boxes that were calling for attention but families of those aboard have so far chosen to treat the news cautiously.

Meanwhile, searches in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia's coast resumed this morning with 10 military planes, two civil planes and 13 ships.

According to the JACC, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) planned three separate searches for today about 2,000 kilometres northwest of Perth, which total some 216,000 square kilometres.

Weather in the search area is reportedly expected to be good, with a cloud base of 2,500 feet and visibility greater than 10 kilometres.