Leaving Kuching
It had been a productive six day stay in hometown. Apart from the optician, I had a good dental visit and for the first time in about 20 years, I managed to get all air-conditions in the apartment working properly. I had been having intermittent AC problems, a fix for which proved elusive until recently.
Today, I fly to Singapore at 1305 and self-connect to Auckland at 1850. It’s not everyday that AirAsia has an afternoon flight to Singapore that connects safely to Air New Zealand’s evening flight.
I left the apartment at 1045 for the airport with my sister and David. Despite having to check my baggage of edibles, I had too much time at the airport. With no lounge or many facilities at the international airside of the airport, I chose to kill about an hour landside with a bowl of chicken congee at McDonald’s. It was very tasty with too much MSG.
I don’t have much time to spare in Singapore today and monitored the whereabouts of my aircraft. It is doing 8 flights today with 25 min turnarounds at smaller airports and 30-35 mins at Kuala Lumpur and 40 mins in Singapore.
Short self-connect
Fortunately everything was like clockwork and I landed in Singapore at 1440.
From Terminal 4, I had to get to Terminal 3. This involved a ride on the free shuttle bus on the landside public roads to Terminal 2 where I was able to walk via an airconditioned underpass to Terminal 3.
It was just over 3h till my flight departure and the check-in desks were quiet. Often, there aren’t many passengers here at the landside desks because they’re joining the flights from connections.
To my surprise, with only a handful of spare seats, I was given a boarding pass straight away. This enabled me to go to an airside lounge but I didn’t think of having a shower till it was a bit too late.
At the gate, the ground staff were trying to get passengers with wheelie bags to check them in, even when within the cabin baggage allowances. With a delay of the inbound aircraft and then heavy rain, we boarded late after a long hold in the single gate room that had no toilet.
Onboard, there was a further delay as a new flight plan was then required due to some diversion airports in Indonesia being no longer available.
In total we departed about 90 mins late. I had managed to get my paid last-minute upgrade to Premium Economy but in a middle seat. The seat width and recline is much better than in economy class, so it was money well spent.