Craig

To be fair, I used it very recently and the speed was decent (before it was open to all). Much faster than say TK which is unusable most of the time because it's so slow. MH wasn't strict with the 100 Mbps limit back then. You could always get new vouchers from the crew. I think you mean MH 140/141? MH 122/123 is redeye ex-KUL and daytime ex-SYD. From the look of it, it appeared as tho it's tech out of KUL on MH140. MH should know better not to delay this flight too much as SYD has a curfew and they'd have to cancel or delay the flight until the curfew has passed. MTN was sitting on the ground for the whole night on the 30th. If they really have to delay a flight, most likely it's one of those morning greater China flights that will be delayed rather than SYD/MEL/AKL. SYD will be the worst option due to curfew. MH715 was delayed by over 7 hours once or twice in October, sometimes waiting for MH161 from DOH. And today's MH 715 is already delayed by 1.75 hours. Maybe they are waiting for pax/aircraft on MH 195 from BOM which is running about 2 hours late. Yes.

MH really need a new marketing agency. How can such huge news be posted on a small hard to find press release page? Nothing on socials, front page of their website etc.? If you are lazy to click, MH will begin offering free WiFi too all pax including Economy beginning tomorrow (01 NOV).

And for some, the 350 means they could potentially send the ex-SU 359 (TC-LGI/J/K/L) to KUL like they did yesterday. Comes with a much better J class with enclosed suites and proper PEY. But more importantly. TK is also making KUL 2x 77W for the most part of NW23 schedule.

Is one of MH's 330 out or are they over optimistic with their 330 schedule? It seems like 1-2 330 flights are severely delayed for the past few weeks (not by 1-2 hours but sometimes up to 6-9 hours). e.g. today's MH 366 to TPE is delayed by 6.5 hours, yesterday was MH 376 to CAN etc.

August and September is long gone and we are halfway through October. Aeroroutes is indicating further delays to the 7M8 with first commercial flight scheduled for 01NOV23. Will MH receive its first 7M8 within the next week or so? Thankfully MH management is not relying solely on VFR and MY-IN traffic. Those secondary cities are marketed for beyond KUL connections too. Not many people wants to fly say PER-KUL-ATQ on a 737 all the way, a journey that's >10h and >5,000 miles. That's equivalent to a KUL-IST as the crow flies. As cheap as OD can get, I'd not fly them on KUL-PER-AKL in Y or in J. But if they can get people to fly this all the way, good for them.

I’d have taken advantage of MH’s fare sale to the 3 newly launched Indian cities (looking at Amritsar specifically). I’d have booked one (it’s really cheap for business class, RM2,000 round trip) if it weren’t for the 738 planned for this trip (or god forbid, swapped to 73H). At 2,653 miles each way, that’s just a hairline shorter than KUL-PKX. I’ll go to Kochi instead. Slightly more expensive but a city that is also on my list. MH really need to consider installing better seats on these 5+ hours “regional” flights and a red eye on the way back.

I am just here for the tea 🍵🌝

Popped by the satellite lounge last week. Plenty of food but food didn’t taste the best. The potatoes paneer and rice pilaf was probably the best amongst all. Food choices seems to be more but can they get rid of those warung-style “fan” that act as a fly deterrent. Or even better yet, don’t have any flies over the food. It’s kinda gross. And replace some of those cheap plastic food cover. It was a fridge of nothing but Coke Zero last week 😂. But there were no soda water other than at the bar. I always thought soda water is just carbonated water with maybe some tiny bit of salt/minerals thrown in. Not sugar.

ID closed the old BDO airport and this new airport is located a good 100km from the city of Bandung. Makes KUL seems like Haneda now. MH even provides complimentary shuttle from KJT to the city (takes 1.5 hours according to their website but who knows). And I am curious why most of these secondary/tertiary ID (other than KNO/DPS) cities get these departure from KUL? YIA, KJT, PKU all departs around 1700-1900 and arrives back to KUL close to midnight. Even SUB's daily flight whilst not the most ideal, departs around 07:00.

Probably a combination of both. But I suspect more so on passenger demand since December is one of the peak travel months and they'd probably send their freighters to PEN instead of a larger passenger plane if it's mostly cargo. I'd imagine a lot of companies slow down between Christmas and New Year.

China Airlines will up gauge their PEN flights from A321neo (180 seats) to A333 (313 seats) for the month of December. Business class will go from flat bed to recliner 😅 but a huge increase in capacity.

You are right. Air Arabia flies SHJ-KUL 11x weekly and KU 3x weekly (both aren't loaded for Summer 2024 tho). No BAH/AMM flights. GF only flies to SIN, BKK, MNL. And also SV with a few MED flights plus IR from TKA (both aren't convenient for beyond connections from those cities). I remember Iraqi Airways used to fly Baghdad-KL not too long ago 😅

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Oman Air is also increasing from current 8x to 14x weekly beginning March 2024. So next summer, we will have: 5x daily JED (3x SV, 1 each between MH and QR) 4x daily DOH between MH and QR 3x daily DXB by EK 2x daily AUH by EY 2x daily MCT by WY 2x daily IST by TK That seems to be a lot of MENA/Europe traffic plus a number of Americas and Africa connections but yet no European carriers have announced their plans to return to KUL for summer 2024 (yet?). Most if not all of these carriers above have beyond KUL connections with MH and to a certain extent, OD.

In other news, MH and CX will not proceed with their joint business (metal-neutral, network planning and coordination etc.) application with MAVCOM. It appears that MAVCOM isn't satisfied with the outcome of this proposed JB as it will severely hamper competition between MY and HK. I am curious if you know that the most revered airline in MWings, SQ, is using PP Business for their business/*G pax? Probably not SIN. It's too short of a flight to upload proper meals. BKK/DPS has almost always been uplifted from outstation. Some cities like HKT, PNH etc. are back-catered (i.e. uplifted from KUL). Just 7 weekly NRT and 5 weekly HND. HND will be swapped with NRT in a few days and HND doesn't appear in schedule until Summer 2024 (not open for sale, but MH70/71, the daytime KUL-NRT is open for sale). I don't know if HND schedule is not working out for them or if they can't get a permanent preferred slot at HND.

QR will resume PEN passenger service beginning 29 October. Routing will be DOH-HKT-PEN (no traffic rights between HKT and PEN). And QR will add another daily DOH-KUL flight beginning 15 December for a total of 4 daily between MH (359/333) and QR (77W/788). Flight schedule will be very similar to previous QR852/853 and will be operated by B787-8.

But I was replying to KK Lee’s argument. I wasn’t the one making the straw man’s argument here. The whole premise was - tourists avoid Malaysia because alcohol is expensive. I said tourism malaysia has 99 problems. Expensive alcohol ain’t one. And the goal post kept moving. And I was saying, we used to have nonstop flights from the UK to a duty free island. But it wasn’t successful. Get the connection between a nonstop flight to a duty free island where alcohol is dirt cheap but yet it was unsuccessful? And please don’t listen blindly to whatever politicians say (Malaysia or otherwise). Changing the definition of states in Malaysia requires a constitutional amendment. Not something to be announced over a party general assembly and be done with.

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1. Has this been gazetted? Because Sarawak and Sabah governments are still identifying themselves as Malaysian states. 2. You mentioned city to city - do you mean Kuah town and another beach town in Cambodia? Because when I last *lived* in Langkawi in 2020/21, a can of beer costs around RM3-4 (and that's at a restaurant, not from a supermarket). 3. You mean like how in Cambodia and Vietnam try to quote you in USD instead of local currency? 4. And I said, there are a lot of flights from KUL and SZB. I didn't say it's highly connected. My emphasis was on KUL/SZB.

Bullet point renumbered when I removed some text. 1) Did we lose 2 more states along the way or the 14 stripes on our flag adopted in 1963 meant to represent the 11 states + 3 territories? 🤣 2) Sabah Parks is an anomaly in Malaysia. Whilst the entrance fees are high, I've been told that getting the climbing permit isn't easy and it's sold out in advance. So good for them if they can maintain high fees and still get visitors. Sabah generates a lot of income from tourism and they don't have a lot of other industries other than, oxymoronically, palm oil. Same goes for Sipadan - you need to spend 3 nights and, if you are lucky, you get the prized Sipadan day permit. I guess that's the leverage you have when you are one of the top diving sites in the world. Taman Negara on the other hand only charges RM1 entrance fees. Mulu National Park only charges foreigners RM30 for a 5-day pass. 3) I have never said alcohol is cheap in Malaysia - I said, expensive alcohol is not the primary issue. 4) If anything, MYR depreciation is great for tourism. You remember MH1 used to fly LHR-LGK/PEN-KUL and Tui used to fly UK (BHX/LGW)-LGK? There are nonstop flights (and plenty of them) from KUL and SZB plus other cities to LGK.

I was at the domestic MH lounge a few weeks ago and the food quality/selection has improved a lot. I think you were right after the *scheduled* MH main morning departure bank. With current delays, who knows what the morning departure bank is. The GLL food has improved a lot.

Can you provide examples of those countries having cheaper alcohol than Malaysia duty free islands? And you can't just move the goal post all the time.

Depends on the lounge you have access to 😅 But I'd think no. Food is still provided on board, just that instead of the usual rice/noodles, you may get a fruit and cake. And since MH allows you to bring food onboard, I heard patin tempoyak taste great in flight 🤣

Did I miss the memo that Malaysia is banning alcohol or are we talking about banning alcohol? Those 100 drinkers in your example are all still welcomed in Malaysia (and also duty free islands of Langkawi, Tioman, and Labuan where alcohol is cheap). Funny you mention Chinese tourists visiting Japan. Guess all is forgiven with Fukushima now.

SYD is too far for it to be back-catered. It's uplifted from SYD. Back when MH uploaded their menu online, I recall that a few stations were back-catered (i.e. KUL catered for the outbound and inbound MH flight). I recall distinctly that stations such as BKK and DPS was never back-catered where as stations such as HKT, HKG (just after covid), SGN was back-catered. I might be wrong tho.