Colin Charles Agenda

Malaysian Airlines, seems to have mildly improved their services. They’re not as horrendous as they used to be, it would seem.

• First up, on Friday, I gave them a call to see what time my flight would land in Kuala Lumpur. Very polite person on the phone decided not only to tell me the time, she decided to reconfirm the booking, and get me into a seat. She noted that the system stated that I preferred window seats, and I agreed - its good for sleeping, or working undisturbed. She also ensured I’d be placed as in-front as possible. Great. And my frequent flyer details were already recorded.
• Then, at the airport during check-in. I get a really nice Aussie bloke who is highly friendly. This is odd of MAS. My bag weighs a heavy 32.5KG (you’d be surprised at the amount of chai latte, vegimite, tim tams, chocolates, and cherries fit in a suitcase). 32.5KG is actually 0.5KG heavier than what the IATA recommend for baggage handler safety. He basically tells me I’m 0.5kg overweight, but its okay - he’ll just under-declare my weight, and let me through. No asking on my behalf, no fuss, zilch, nada - my bag goes through without question. Its so, unlike, MAS to do this.
• On the plane, the stewards and stewardesses are very much more attentive. They’re now serving Coke, rather than that horrid Pepsi that they used to serve. That in itself butters me up the right way. Food-wise, they served seafood laksa, which was actually pretty darn amazing for plane food. I was truly shocked, taken aback even - it was edible, and tasty.

So, that’s been my MAS experience. The not so good? I’m in a Boeing 777, where the seat capacity is 2-5-2. Sitting in coach in the 2-seater, and when the passenger in-front of me decides he needs to recline his seat, my laptop can’t sit on the tray and be opened. Its currently actually sitting on my lap, burning up my baby making sacks.

The safety video was something I thought I had to watch. Maybe I’m biased to the old ads (since a relative is in it :) ), but the new ads kind of suck. They demonstrate using a life jacket, and they show a family with 2 kids using it as well. And the family is, smiling. I don’t think you’d be smiling when you’re putting on a life jacket, right?

Anyway, MAS don’t seem as bad as they used to be. Or maybe flying Qantas in September opened my eyes to what really bad service is meant to be like?

Update: My flight was delayed by 40 minutes, and they decided not to update such information, so my poor mother had to wait a while for my arrival. Turns out, calling MAS, and they said it was on time. Evil.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 9:20 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.