Malaysia Airline System Bhd. will be privatised as part of a restructuring plan to keep the carrier in business after its two plane disasters this year.

The carrier said its majority investor, state-run Khazanah Nasional will offer 27 sen for each share in the company it does not own, amounting to nearly 1.4 billion ringgit ($470 million) to take the troubled airline private.

Khazanah, which owns 69.37 percent of the carrier, will undertake a comprehensive review and restructuring of the airline, which has suffered two jetliner disasters this year.

Malaysia Airlines' shares were halted from trade before the announcement on Friday.

"We reiterate that the proposed restructuring will critically require all parties to work closely together to undertake what will be a complete overhaul of the national carrier on all relevant aspects," Khazanah said. "Nothing less will be required in order to revive our national airline to be profitable as a commercial entity and to serve its function as a critical national development entity."

The move to de-list from the Malaysian stock exchange follows the airline's intensifying financial woes, having recorded a net loss for the past three years.

Private ownership will give the parent company room to introduce an appropriate capital structure to meet the airline's "substantial funding requirements" in the next few years, and to sustain operations amid a high level of debt, Malaysia Airlines said in its statement.

The move didn't come unexpected for investors. "It is easier to restructure if it's a private company," Ang Kok Heng, the Kuala Lumpur-based chief investment officer of Phillip Capital Management, said before the announcement. "They don't need to worry about making announcements and the timing of it."

A Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down in Ukraine in July, four months after Flight 370 en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur vanished. Even before that disappearance, Malaysia Airlines had racked up 4.13 billion ringgit in losses over the previous three years.

The incident put the carrier under global scrutiny, jeopardising its reputation and prompting boycotts in China, whose nationals accounted for most of the passengers in the March flight that vanished.

The carrier will probably lose more than 1 billion ringgit in 2014 as it grapples with costs and an exodus of passengers, according to analyst estimates. The shares have dropped 23 per cent this year.

Khazanah said in June the carrier had funds to last about a year. .

Bloomberg, Reuters