Above: Pleased to finally arrive in Kuala Lumpur.
Bad start
It wasn’t a good start to the day, waking up to notification that our 1350 Malaysia Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur had been delayed till 1825. That’s a 4h35 delay.
When the flight got upgauged from a B737 to a widebody A330 a few weeks ago, I had a bad feeling. With a fleet of 55 B737, it is easier to find a replacement aircraft in case the assigned aircraft gets held up somewhere with delay or breaks down. Whereas with only 28 A330 in the fleet, it is harder.
Unfortunately, my bad feeling had come true. Flights in/to/from New Zealand have been so unreliable in the years after the pandemic due to Rolls Royce and Pratt & Whitney engine issues, plus other factors. It has made me very wary of what can go wrong.
I spent the extra time at home re-planning my roaming arrangements for the upcoming trip and finally catching up on my shoulder and knee rehab exercises.
At the airport
Quite unusually, we managed to get a Grab car instantly around 1415 which got us to the airport without any traffic. We were at the lounge at 1500.
I told Kim that it is a Malaysian regulatory requirement for the airline to provide meal vouchers for a delay of this duration. Despite having food in the lounge, he went to the airline transfer desk to get the vouchers which turned out to be MYR35 per person.
I thought that was generous until I realised that only gets a Burger King burger. Exploring the food court, we found that it could get 3 sandwiches or 3 local-brand burgers. We got two burgers, a sandwich, a bag of cookies and some water with our two vouchers, leaving a balance of MYR10 unused.
Later, an experienced airline friend told me that outlets will claim the entire amount, regardless of the amount the passenger has consumed. So it is a good idea to use all of it, but didn’t need any more food and couldn’t carry any more apart from the bag of cookies for tomorrow’s budget airline flight.
Flying to Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia Airlines managed to turnaround the A330 in 45 mins and we closed up at 1825 only to be held up by air traffic till 2040. The flight went quickly with a hot meal and wifi and we landed at Kuala Lumpur around 2035.
With no bags, we were out swiftly to wait for the bus to T2. We checked into the Tune Hotel for our nightstop. The room came with a dinner voucher for one person and breakfast which we will not bother having due to the timing of our morning flight.
Despite not being hungry, we reluctantly went down to the restaurant to see what was available on the voucher. I chose the chicken chop which turned out to be a huge piece of battered fried chicken rather than the Hainanese version. Extremely unhealthy but fortunately Kim was OK to share it with me. I really should have gone for the chicken porridge.
We retired to our room after 2200 as we need to be up tomorrow around 0615.
Worrying
While not stressed, we have a lot counting on the flight to Kuala Lumpur today, namely the flight to Istanbul tomorrow and another one to Dublin two days after that.
My concerns evolved as we got past each phase of risk:
- I waited in anticipation for our incoming to leave Kuala Lumpur. It finally departed about 20 mins after the rescheduled time, after having come back from Medina. It appears the original assigned aircraft had become unavailable and this one had been assigned once it completed its Medina rotation.
- Once it landed Kuching, I counted on it not to break down during the turnaround.
- Once we had taken off, I waited for us to be far enough away from Kuching so that if it had a problem, it would continue to Kuala Lumpur instead of returning to Kuching.
- Once past that point, I was relieved but hoped that there would be no bad weather in Kuala Lumpur that would cause us to divert to Penang or Johor Bahru.
Like I said, I have been too accustomed to the uncertainties of flying in/to/from New Zealand in recent years.