A distraught passenger has accused Malaysia Airlines of losing his cat which was supposed to be transported with him on a domestic flight, the latest incident to hit the beleaguered carrier.

Kiran Kumar Nesarajah said in a Facebook post that ground crew at an airport in Labuan in eastern Malaysia had let the pet escape on the runway before his flight took off.

The animal was travelling in a pet carrier which had been locked. But the passenger claimed that someone opened the carrier after the cat had been checked in and did not know how to close it properly, allowing the creature to get out.

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"Now we have a lost frightened cat hiding in a drainpipe on the runway," he wrote in the post earlier this week.

He said staff only searched for the cat for 10 minutes before giving up -- and then the flight took off for Kuala Lumpur.

After landing in the capital, "flight crew and ground staff don’t know anything," he said.

"Not a single call. No one to explain what happened."

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The airline said in a statement the incident was under investigation. "Malaysia Airlines gives serious care and attention to all its cargo and is looking into the matter," it said.

The airline was plunged into crisis in 2014 by the disappearance of flight MH370 and the downing of MH17 over war-torn Ukraine. The twin disasters pushed the perennially loss-making firm to the brink of bankruptcy as bookings dried up.