Malaysian works on its image

MH 370: Malaysia Airlines Struggles to Salvage Its Image One Year On

Airport groundstaff walk past Malaysia Airlines planes parked on the tarmac at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang on June 17, 2014.

With a new CEO and an evolving marketing strategy, the beleaguered airline is trying to rebrand and reinvent

The past year has been a terrible one for Malaysia Airlines. On March 8, 2014, Flight 370 from Kuala Lumpur bound for the Chinese capital, Beijing, lost contact with air-traffic controllers less than an hour after takeoff, and vanished from radar screens shortly thereafter.

What followed was an unprecedented multinational search across over a million square miles that cost tens of millions of dollars in what has turned out to be one of the biggest aviation mysteries of all time.

Then in mid-July, disaster hit Malaysia Airlines again when MH 17 went down over Ukraine. This time, the cause of the aircraft's disappearance from the sky seemed clearer - a surface-to-air missile allegedly fired by pro-Russian rebels engaged in a battle with Ukrainian forces.

Many would argue that the Malaysian carrier was simply unfortunate to have lost a second plane in just over four months, especially since more than 30 other airlines had continued to fly over eastern Ukraine despite the violent conflict raging there (and a warning from the International Civil Aviation Organization). However, the disaster only exacerbated the loss of goodwill that Malaysia Airlines was already facing, especially given the lack of evidence on the whereabouts of MH 370.