Malaysia Airlines (Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange: MASM-MY) can't seem to catch a break, as even Air France's nine-day old strike doesn't appear to be sending many passengers its way.

Air France (Euronext Paris: AF-FR)'s pilots walked off the job on September 15, grounding about 60 percent of its flights, including my flight from Paris to Singapore last week, which was canceled barely 15 minutes before boarding.

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The gate agent was confident the flight would leave as scheduled the next day, saying it was only canceled because a pilot had called in sick and the substitute hadn't had enough rest between flights.

But I was skeptical, especially after standing in line for more than an hour with a mother-daughter pair faced with their third canceled flight in two days. An agent at the baggage claim said this was the current strike's first flight canceled at the last minute.

After Air France had bussed all the unhappy passengers out to hotels at the happiest place in Europe - Euro Disney - I booked a seat on Malaysia Airlines, or MAS. It was cheap - about 550 euros ($706) for a ticket booked less than 12 hours before departure. By comparison, on other airlines, prices for a ticket from Paris to Singapore purchased with a 24-hour lead time range from around 670 euros on Singapore Airlines (Singapore Exchange: SIAL-SG) to more than a thousand euros on British Airways (London Stock Exchange: IAG-GB).

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But deciding to overcome qualms about flying the troubled carrier may be less surprising than how few others did the same, with the flight appearing only around 70 percent full.

Ticket prices, the easiest way to judge demand, didn't change much over the weekend, suggesting MAS didn't see a pickup in bookings, said Mohshin Aziz, an analyst at Maybank (Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange: MBBM-MY), noting the carrier doesn't release its booking data.

If MAS has trouble capturing essentially captive passengers, the planned overhaul of Malaysia's flag carrier may struggle out of the starting gate. MAS declined to comment.

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It's not a minor matter for Malaysia. Tourism contributed nearly 16 percent of Malaysia's gross domestic product (GDP) and 14 percent of employment in 2012, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

Malaysia had around 25.7 million tourist arrivals in 2013, according to Tourism Malaysia data. MAS carried around 10.8 million international passengers last year.