Craig
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Posts posted by Craig
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It appears that MOT is expecting jet service to resume at SZB around June 2024. Phase 1 of the redevelopment includes 5 jets (737/320) and 6 ATR bays. I haven't been to SZB recently - is there a lot of construction going on there?
I assume that there'll be a new terminal built soon too?
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Just now, Robert said:is it cheaper for airlines?
I've seen similar with flights between the Philippines and SingaporeDon't know. Maybe due to aircraft/slot availability. But usually it's usually the lower yield flights that have these operating hours. KMG-KUL is fine, but KUL-KMG is not. A 2AM arrival means a 3AM back home or to your hotel if you are traveling to KMG. I think you are right that Cebu Pacific/PAL offers these sort of flights between MNL and SIN/KUL as well.
The new Shenzhen Airlines second daily flight arrives KUL around 3AM and departs KUL around 4AM. Not ideal for most pax.
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20 hours ago, jani said:MH indeed are the biggest losers. I liked their sarcastic argument a few years back saying they should move to KLIA2 as well
Along with OD. OD would be much easier to move to T2 than MH lol although they do have a few connecting partners at T1.
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Coming on the heels of Juneyao's PVG-PEN flights, MU will be introducing daily KMG-KUL flights beginning 31 March 2024 for a month (for now).
Schedule:
MU9629 KMG1725 – 2140KUL 320 D
MU9630 KUL2240 – 0155+1KMG 320 DWhy do Chinese carriers love operating at these odd hours 😅
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Per airlineroute, Juneyao is adding PVG-PEN beginning 31 May 2024 with 4 weekly flights. Surprisingly, KUL was not on the list even though I've read somewhere they are interested in KUL.
HO1365 PVG1730 - 2300PEN 320 x246
HO1366 PEN0005 - 0525PVG 320 x357If I remember correctly, this was the largest unserved route for PEN-China.
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21 minutes ago, jani said:Mind explaining this part? Not sure I understand
I believe it was 2019 that the then PH government introduced the departure levy after swapping GST for SST (because GST casts a wider net compared to SST and there was significant shortfall). This is supposed to mimic UK's APD. It's supposed to be based on the passenger's final destination (e.g. TG's KUL-BKK-HKG departure levy should be the same as KUL-HKG on MH/CX/AK) rather than the first international destination. I have seen fares where it was calculated based on the first international destination instead of the final even though it's a <24H transit at the ASEAN city.
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Mavcom is taking a regressive step towards standardizing PSC at airports around Malaysia.. Mavcom is splitting KUL T1 and T2's PSC into 2 tiers again beginning 1 June 2024. KUL T1 will incur RM73 for all international flights where as KUL T2 + all other airports (except JHB) will incur RM50 for all flights (ASEAN or outside ASEAN will share the same PSC). Departure from JHB will incur RM16 for domestic and RM50 for international.
It appears that MH will be the biggest loser here. Departure levy is charged based on first international destination (SQ, TG etc. will have lower departure levy compared to MH for say a KUL-LHR/HKG route) and PSC will be much higher for MH than AK/D7 ex-KUL.
They should have grouped it as KUL (T1 & T2) and non-KUL. Out the door MH is already at a disadvantage of RM27 for all ex-KUL pax and RM13 for all transfer pax at KUL.
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7 minutes ago, Robert said:Was looking at this earlier and was wondering why BKK was on there because they are already flying. After a while I realised that the existing flights are to DMK haha.
Wonder if DMK will get stopped?
Operating both locations is feasible because Scoot operate to bothOh you are right. DMK is getting axed. The BKK-PEN is not the most desirable flight schedule with a 00:50 arrival into PEN. DMK has SL and FD where as BKK has FY and TG.
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FY applied for 3x weekly BKI-PVG and another 7x weekly PEN-BKK (making it double daily PEN-BKK). Will FY have enough 737s for this operation by May? It's going to get quite crowded for PEN-BKK with 2-3x FD, 1x TG, 1x SL, and 2x daily FY.
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Some interesting route applications by Capital A Group.
KUL-LBJ will be a great addition without having to transfer either in SUB/DPS/CGK. They also applied for KUL-BBI/CCJ/GAU/BPN. Is Kerala the hot destination in India? TRV, COK and soon CCJ!
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Someone at MAHB should probably have a few counters set aside for passengers whose gates are closing. They have this in most airports (although it's mostly for security and not immigration). Don't need to use a ground staff yelling out flights but a TV screen with eligible flights asking them to go to this special lane.
Something doesn't add up if he was indeed flying J to SIN. If he was in J, he should have just used the J immigration instead of being sent back to Y.
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7 hours ago, Robert said:Did they only have every other counter open?
Saw that a popular travel Youtube guy missed his flight owing to the immigration queues.Not going to add a click to his videos but I assume he's a seasoned traveler and has status. I've only used this service once a while back so I am not sure if they still offer it. Apparently there's an immigration officer at the MH Business Suite (for OWE) check-in. The officer can perform your exit immigration there and you will be escorted through immigration bypassing the queues and escorted through the customs X-Ray too and the agent will usually drop you off at the regional lounge or train station.
And if I am know I am late but not too late, I will not be taking videos or photos. And in this situation, most will ask "I am really sorry but I have a flight that leaves in xx minutes. Would you be so kind to let me squeeze through". Not the most desirable favor but most of the time, people will just ask you to go ahead because they themselves have been in this situation before.
But the good news is MH is on time 🤣 (I find airlines to be on time when I don't want them to and delayed when I want them to be on time). Maybe MH can introduce this "flat tire policy" as a goodwill gesture like most American carriers do. If a pax arrives at a check-in desk within 2 hours of desk closure, put them on standby for the next available flight (at least on domestic/regional flights where there are multiple flights a day). American carriers do it for free, but I would imagine pax wouldn't mind paying say RM100/pax if they can get onto their next flight without buying a whole new ticket.
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KUL immigration can be horrible during certain time, especially between 1-9PM for arrivals. I arrived the other day around 8AM and it looked like a breeze, maybe around 10-15 minutes or so for non e-gates eligible users. I was really surprised since I thought that was a peak arrival from IST/ME/India and ANZ. Departures looked terrible on a weekday around 5PM when I was leaving and I was shocked because I haven't seen departures queue that long ever.
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1 hour ago, Robert said:QR could restrict it to only their eligible passengers
I don't believe QR has such restrictions in any of their lounges but doesn't mean they can't start. There are quite a few MH J pax at their SIN/BKK lounge as it is, but of course opening one at KUL would mean much more MH J pax. It appears that MAHB wants the lounge revenue to themselves now so there are no individual airline lounges. Maybe that's why PPL have to move to the main concourse instead of the C gates where most of their pax will depart from.
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11 hours ago, Timothy said:here's to hoping for a BA lounge in KUL.
Highly doubt it. I think MAHB didn't renew the lease for all individual airline lounges except for MH understandably. When KUL opened in 1998, there was supposed to be a joint QF-BA lounge. Not too sure if it ever opened tho.
A more likelier outcome is a Star Alliance lounge since Star has quite a big presence at KUL. If any oneworld individual airline lounge were to (re)open, it'd be CX. Would love a QR lounge but that means MH will have to pay QR tons of money when everyone flying J is going to their lounge 🤣
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7 minutes ago, Robert said:I really don't have an issue with the TK old 777 seats and seems that people have a melt down if they down and wall and door around their seat.
Perhaps its because I was so used to flying to the MH 744 to/from LHR on the upper deck on the recliner seats that privacy doesn't really bother me.That is true. I can live with having a neighbor but I detest a cubby hole. TK 777s are perfect for sleeping, especially for TK 60/61 schedule. Both flights require pax to sleep to avoid jet lag (maybe a bit less on TK60). I know a lot of people sing praises on SQ seats but the non-bulkhead seats are horrible for anyone >175cm. The cubby hole for your feet is neither here nor there and I have to arch my back when I sleep.
MH 744 oh wow. Haven't been on that in a while. Those were pretty bad. I guess the closest seat I've sat on that resembles MH 744/772 are TG's 772 which they still use occasionally for KUL. Back then it was TG 772/744, MH 772/744 and SQ's Skybed on their 77E/744. All variations of one another.
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24 minutes ago, jahur said:I think i saw q4 2025 but this was a draft from last year. Knowing how we get things done here prepare to extend the timeline by an extra 1-2years ontop.
If construction hasn't even started (or worse, plans hasn't even finalized), I'd say 2030
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On 3/5/2024 at 8:58 AM, Pall said:Last 3 months have seen a serious upswing for China market, with airlines in this region scrambling for capacity to ride the wave.
For India, they will never have enough aircraft to serve the growing middle class market. 470 aircraft order by Air India is literally not even close to MH ordering 20 A330neo in terms of population to aircraft ratio. What India lacks is sufficient infra to cope with the growing markets and bilateral traffic rights approval. They need newer secondary airports to reduce dependency on main hubs as well.
Chinese carriers seems to be increasing their flights quite a bit to Malaysia thanks to the bilateral visa waiver policy. But some are short-lived, like MU's PKX-KUL.
India has a huge domestic market, several order of magnitudes larger than MH's. MH could have been huge like TK/QR but it might be a bit too late now and MH also lack of funding to do huge orders. We shall see if TG becomes successful with their huge 787 order.
On 3/5/2024 at 12:42 PM, JuliusWong said:India can be notorious in granting rights into their primary hubs, let alone their secondary airports. Emirates and Etihad wanted more flights but the India government said no. Emirates has no choice but to deploy their high dense A380s on their routes to India. Despite the constraint, the India government also does not allow their own airlines or even international airlines to fly willingly from secondary airport bypassing the hub airport.
AI has a few oddball routes, like ATQ-BHX, AMD-LGW, BLR-SFO (no brainer for this route tho). MH traded 4 weekly LHR slots for more India rights last time. So who knows what MH/AK Group can give. As of 9 Feb 24, there are no unallocated seats for BOM, BLR, MAA, HYD and only 145 seats to CCU and 17 seats to DEL left per week per current ATR agreement (last updated 2012). Malaysian carriers have to fly to non-metropolitan cities if they want more India traffic. Frequency and capacity (no larger than a 744, whatever that means) aren't restricted outside of those 6 cities.
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On 3/5/2024 at 6:01 PM, Robert said:Competition is a good thing. Perhaps will inspire MH to fix there never ending broken and deflating J seats as well as the IFE/WIFI that has many issues and often fails. A few people I know as well as myself endured such issues over a 4 day period on the same aircraft (9M-MAD) and yes it made me mad!
MH offers free wifi but it's 50/50 whether you can use it. BA offers paid wifi but their yin yang seats are bad. I prefer my TK 333/77W seats without cubby holes with slow wifi
Oh and I flew MTE, MHConnect sticker was there, but broken. Very on point for MH 
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On 3/5/2024 at 5:05 PM, JuliusWong said:I like how The Independent reporting the news about KUL. I am very surprised BA can't make BKK works with LHR. Qatar Airways has 6x daily flight! What the........I think one slot is lease from Royal Brunei.
And the return of BA to KUL deserves some celebration.
BKK is mostly O&D, a leisure destination, and very seasonal (traffic is soft between April and October). BA is also competing with 2x TG and 1x BR daily ex-LHR plus dozens more 1-stop connection. And unlike KUL, BKK is the end-point for BA (maybe a handful of connections on PG but that's about it).
21 hours ago, Robert said:Immigration at Changi is now gates for departing passengers and many can use gates for arrival. KLIA Immigration has 10 countries and you still need to queue for the first time.
Transiting between airlines is easy at Changi but the impression I have at KLIA is poor because many often counters airside are not manned and signage is poor.Malaysia loves paperwork and bureaucracy. Things are planned out by an intern and makes it unnecessarily complicated with box flow chart like they learned in uni
I am curious if they plan to use screens instead of printed A4 paper to inform transit pax their connecting gates (like FRA/MUC where passengers can look at specific connecting gates from the flight once they leave the jet bridge). Or maybe update the MH app to accommodate push notification for boarding or gate for connections.
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4 hours ago, jahur said:Saw some of the airport extension plan, a few relocation of the hangars, GA companies, meteorological dept and AFRS is already underway.
Any idea of the timeline for construction / completion?
2 hours ago, Robert said:I took FY to XSP a few weeks ago. Had an issue with or two with grab and my transport was very late. Arrrived so late I thought id missed the flight but was still let on.
That's the beauty of SZB. You can be dropped off as late as 30 mins prior to departure and you'll be fine (you should be fine for MH domestic at KUL T1 too provided you've checked in online. Cutting it very close and it depends how high your A/B gates are and how long security is).
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So QF SYD-KUL and LH FRA-KUL later this year plus IB MAD-KUL and AY HEL-KUL in 2025? 😬
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BA just announced they will return to KUL and BKK. BA will return to KUL beginning 10NOV24. I like how they just insert this pretty big news on a small paragraph in their larger complimentary onboard messaging news release. Flight schedule for BA33/34:
BA33 LHR2045 - 1730+1KUL 789 D
BA34 KUL2315 - 0520+1LHR 789 D
Interesting that they’ll resume KUL during winter (the softest demand for travel between UK and Malaysia is between November and late February, minus Xmas/NY). Good to hear nonetheless!
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39 minutes ago, JuliusWong said:Something related to AirAsia market scope, Vietjet signs a provisional order with Airbus for 20 A330-900neos, to be delivered from 2026 onwards. This will take out a chunk of Fly-Thru passengers from AirAsia, especially on Vietnam-Australia market. AirAsia X will only resume A330-900neo delivery next year 2025, having 15 on order.
https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-02-vietjet-to-order-20-a330neo-widebodie
I thought VJ wasn't doing too well financially? It's no Bamboo Airways but that's provisional order is as big as MH's 339 fleet.
Subang Skypark Development Including New RM 1.5 Billion KTM Rail Link
in General Aviation
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I am pretty sure MH wants to use SZB. AK was begging to stay at SZB last time and I'd be very surprised if they don't want to begin operations there again. This is not only limited to domestic but regional as well. And if neither airlines apply for slots, they will lose the ability to apply when demand grows because it will be a slot restricted airport.
That looks like former T2 along with (former?) Airod, DCA and Met Office area? What happened to the former T1 area? IIRC, it was meant to be some hangar or engineering building but I don't recall seeing anything there. Isn't ex-T1 land better? It's larger (and IIRC, it has at least 14 gates back then) and a huge parking facility and it's closer to the roundabout.
Subang Airport Road isn't the best right now and getting in there between 5 and 7:30 is a huge pain. Can't imagine catching a 6-8 PM flight there.I hope there are plans to either have a spur LRT line from the Kelana Line or the KTM Subang Skypark link running at least every 30 minutes for people to take it (not too sure if heavy rail is the best answer either). A spur link will be the best since it can effectively decrease headways for the busier part of the Kelana line.
I don't think it's a Scoot destination. It's more likely a SQ mainline destination. I can imagine it'd be a premium flight. The most affluent neighborhoods around Klang Valley are within 20-25 minutes drive (without traffic) of SZB.
Hopefully it's not WCT/Pavilion Group developing this project 😅. They aren't the best (and I am being very polite) but from their last press release, it seems like it's WCT 😓. Hopefully they will include some sort of rail link or at worst, pedestrian friendly walk to the current KTM station. They aren't known for designing anything with pedestrians in mind to maximize parking charges (e.g. Pavilion Damansara Heights).