Malaysia Airlines Announces First MABHackathon Winners

21st Feb 2017

The first winners of the inaugural MABHackathon event were announced yesterday at the 25-hour hacking session at Malaysia Airlines Training Academy in Kelana Jaya.

Present at the event were the top brass of Malaysia Airlines Bhd, including Chief Executive Officer Peter Bellew, Chief Information Officer Tan Kok Menh and Chief Operations Officer Izham Ismail.

The hackathon started back in November with the “Discovery Challenge” and was followed by “The Ideation Lab”, “Pre-hack” and “The Hack Day” itself.

The MABHackathon was sponsored by IMB, GoQuo, Thales, TSC, Sedania and Cloudera. Strategic partners included MDEC and MaGIC, while technology partners were Amadeus, TM, Getronics and Maxis.

Malaysia Airlines CEO Peter Bellew said:

We were delighted to receive such positive responses from university students, budding entrepreneurs and business partners to be a part of the airline’s digital transformation via the MABHackathon. We hope that participants benefit from this initiative and continue pursuing their passion for innovation. As this will now be a yearly programme, we want to encourage more local talents to participate. This year’s winners will make history as they will be the first group to win and airline hackathon in Malaysia.

Ir Dr Karl Ng, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation Director for Data Economy (MDEC) added:

The Malaysia Airlines Hackathon is definitely one with a very clear end goal of improving Malaysia Airline’s services. And we are excited to see the innovative solutions being implemented. These participants came from all over the nation; they are the people that will take this country to a stage where data analytics and digital economy will form the bedrock of our economy.

Hacker Team Ukay Wizards left the ceremony with a Grand Prize of RM20,000 in cash and return Economy Class tickets to London. The Gravity WolfPack came in second to secure a RM15,000 cash prize and return Economy Class tickets to Sydney, while Paper Plane won third place and a cash reward of RM10,000 and return Economy Class tickets to Seoul.

Special and Most Promising awards went to Team App and FlyHacker, who both won return Economy Class tickets to an ASEAN destination of their choosing.

In addition, all winners can also participate in an incubation programme in the Malaysia Airlines Innovation Lab and have won entry into the National Big App Challenge 4.0, sponsored by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation.