Georg Burdicek

Hmmmm yes the new SQ Businessclass is nice, but limited to very few aircraft (A380 + 773) so far I had the pleasure of using SQ old Biz-Product (Skybeds) on 747 recently and wished to be in MH 777 or 747 - seats are tightly spaced compared to MH or TG, and when the bed is fully extended, your leg is from foot to some inches below your knee under the front seat. That's not quite comfortable, especially if you have to climb over your neighbour to get to the aisle. With TG or MH you just make a bigger step to move over someone in bed-position.

I was once (as a teenager long long ago when this was still possible...) jumpseating on a Lufthansa 747 bound for Singapore. The captain decided to use autoland, and the computer produced a rather hard landing. The captain quoted this, shaking his head "Na, das können wir aber immer noch besser" ("Well, we still can do this better" )

Quito Airport remains closed at least until Nov24th (according to NOTAM). According to this link the ecuadorian transport ministry has revoked IBERIAs permission to operate to Quito Airport And, another A340-600 overshot the runway today, SAA in Johannesburg: Click for Pic Source: http://airlinersgallery.blogspot.com/

An 18month old Airbus A340-600 of spanish flag carrier IBERIA was sevearly damaged today when landing at Quito Airport in Ecuador. On touchdown, one tire exploded and the aircraft slid over the runway and as a result overshot the runway. Landing gear collapsed and the aircraft fell on its left wing. No fatalities, but some injuries occured among the 333 passengers. Specialist say after first investigation that this aircraft may be written off despites its young age as 3 out of the 4 engines as well pylons are damaged, wing structure injured, landing gear damaged, and the fuselage structure shows multiple cracs... Pictures can be found here: http://www.elperiodico.cat/info/galeriasv2...p;idgaleria=969

according to the investigation report by Danish authorities, a seal that was intended to be used for the nose gear has been used in a main gear assembly and caused the failure. So this time it's not the aircraft's fault, but maintenence.

Source: www.media24.com

Dear Captain, If you want to post longer videos, just contact me pls... I can host them on my server, in the same video format as youtube does....But no time restriction here. Can of course also do the conversion from any video format. Cheers Georg

Its near realtime, so you have about 120 secunds delay between reality and display....

It feels like really sitting in the tower or at ATC and watch all those aircrafts start, land and pass by http://dskt6954.zhaw.ch/ This is a great piece of programming by Swiss students from the university of applied sciences. It not only shows the aircraft with callsigns/flight numbers, but if you click on one of the virtual planes you get even more information, like origin and destination, current speed, altitude and climb/sinkrate... with some flights you can also see which aircraft is used, including registration, manufacturing date and a picture of the respective a/c. Too bad it's only available for zurich region... But it's a great tool&fun to watch nonetheless.

After my rant about my recent experience, I guess I also should report about the bright sides of travelling on MH. Today I was travelling on MH 607 from KUL to SIN. Checked in early at KL Sentral, and left early to the airport to finish up some work and take a refreshing shower at the First Class lounge. At boarding time (lounge at sattelite, gate G6 at contact pier), I checked my documents - and shock! neither passport nor boardingpass were there. 30 minutes left until departure. Where could they be? Left at the shower? At the seat? Somewhere else... Nothing to find... pace went up as time flew by...10 minutes till departure time. "We are paging passenger Georg Burdicek, please proceed immediatly to gate G6...." No documents to find. In the meantime, 6 groundstaff were searching the lounge. The young lady at the lounge checkin counter asked kindly if she could search my handbag, meanwhile i was ripping my troley apart.... 19:26 - scheduled departure should be 19.30. I already saw my flight leaving and my connection on SQ to FRA and VIE as well.... "Sir, may it be this....?" - and she really found it! It was in my bag but in a division where i usually put nothing in and therefore did not check. 19.28 - "Now hurry, I'll escort you". Sweating like I don't know what (i felt every single pound of fat in my overweight body) finally I arrived at the airplane at 19:35... We had to wait for antoher 15 minutes before we could finally depart. Allthough being late, i was warmly welcomed by the crew, and pampered with several hot towels as they saw that I was seriously exhausted. I was also given several glasses of water, and calmed down by a very nice crewmember "relax, sometimes even our captain arrives too late." Now today this was service as I knew it from Malaysia Airlines. Everybody smiling, polite and professional. They even cared to adress us with our names - on a 55 Minutes flight! Of course, meal service is time restricted, but nonetheless was carried out with the same warmth and professionality. By the way, if they would cater those sandwiches and fruits in the snackbox, i guess complaints could be less. So I want to say thank you to all involved in my rescue today. They really showed how customer care should work! I am currently in Singapore, waiting for my flight in the old queen of the skies back to europe.

same here, 1992, DC10 VIE - DXB - KUL ... my first longhaul flight ever.... And I LOVED those pneumatic headphones.

There is this saying about surveys and statistics in Austria: "Glaube niemals einer Statistik die Du nicht selbst gefälscht hast" - or "Never trust statistics you did not falsify yourself"

Or A380 (853 seats)

so I sent this letter to NST, the Star and Businesstravel Asia

I could not figure it out either. Probably some sort of cucumber or pumpkin. The red thingy is red pepper.

To quote the other thread... This is how it looks like now: And these are those tasty and inviting looking sandwics.

What is the best adress to send/email letter of complaints at MAS? I am really upset. I was travelling today on MH789 from BKK to KUL in Business Class, and the service delivered was the poorest I ever had... But it all started right before checkin when I wanted to collect my ticket. The ticket agent in BKK told me that she can not issue the ticket because someone else already collected it. But I did not collect it, and no one else is allowed to collect it. After some arguing that I did not collect the ticket so far, she wanted a re-issuing fee of THB1500. Why should I pay reissuing for something I did not receive so far (interestingly enough, they could not tell me when the ticket should have been issued). After some arguing, the station manager being unavailable, we agreed on not issuing the ticket but checking me in. Of course this gave troubles with the checkin agent... But after some discussion there as well it all worked out. This procedure took me nearly 40 minutes. On board, i was surprised that no hot towel was offered before departure. Only before landing, hot towels were offered. The food was okay, allthough some choices have not been available (with Business class only half full this is a shame). During meal only one drink + glass of water was offered. Crew was very quick in putting trays away again. No coffee, tea offered. But what was really highly unprofessional was that the crew disappeared after meal service. No more drinks offered, no flight attendant to see for the next hour or so. A British gentleman seating next to me wanted some coffee and called an attendant. It took her more than 3 minutes to respond - mind you, in a 737 where it is less then 10 steps. But the biggest surprise was that the F/A said that she can not give him any more drinks as meal service was over. He got really upset, and finally got his coffee and two other passengers got a glass of water. I am sorry, this is not the service for a 5* Airline on an international business class route. I am Enrich Gold Member (and not living in malaysia this is quite an issue to achieve this level... ) but I am seriously disappointed by the performance of MAS on this flight. I have experienced Thai on SIN-BKK route last week, and i was surprised by their quality of service. I've been flying SIN-KUL-BKK a few days before in Economy (as businesscl. was fully booked) and experienced the "great new snackbox" concept. Whow I have not eatan something THAT disgusting for a long time. Sandwic (as MAS wants to spell it) really tasteless. Plain awful. But crew was very attentive and always poured new drinks for the whole flight... By the way, the box already changed from posh black/gold design to a cheapo printed cardboard box. THey had a food survey, with questions like "do you think this box is suitable as a gift" (or something like this, can not remember exactly, but about this direction...)... and when I saw what the people around me filled in the forms I was not alone with not feeling happy about it. If MAS continues like this, then I was a loyal customer.

Well, she was neither visible (not even strobes or something) nor audible - she must have been rather high for a lowpass, at least 1200ft agl would be my guess...

Despite advertising the flyby in sydneys newspapers, no A380 was seen over sydney harbour. a crowd of people was really disappointed as someone told that the aircraft has landed 10 minutes ago at the airport...

For the firstflight Sydney-Singapore it will be 16.00 departure Sydney, 22:15 arrival Singapore.

I will but only on the Syd-Sin leg - other direction too expensive. I'll blog about my whole trip on http://a380.burdicek.com

I have always learnt that cutting back is not the best way to get out of crisis. And making a product cheaper, and more uninteresting, neither. You have to generate something unique, then you have an argument against your comeptitor. I don't understand why MH is doing that bad.... probably they should do more marketing activities in foreign countrys, so they generate more inbound pax. MAS is still (was?) an insider tip for travelling to asia... No adverts, no big representation here in austria, even when they operated to vienna. So where should the pax come from? And remember, by cutting routes you tendentially make the airline more unattractive, because a network depends on it's routes. For me it's sad to see MH going downhill. As i said in early posts, MH was a lifeline for me, and I really enjoyed being guest onboard, and I also have a certain personal relationship to MH; but if i compare service between my first flight on MH in 1992 and 2002, it wennt down a lot. And when I compare 2002 to 2007, its almost a disaster. 2007 - not even printed manue cards in Golden Club Class.... even Biman Bangladesh has those...The catering on EWR - ARN is just a joke (in Golden Club Class).... I don't understand why they always start cutting corners on F&B Service - this is the least significant part of cost in an airline ticket, and when prices increase for F&B, I guess no customer would complain to pay $5 more for a ticket, but keep the quality. Management overhead and administrative chaos - these two things are the money eaters. But of course, a manager would never dream of cutting costs in his fields. Because even if he fails and he ruins the airline to death, he will surely receive a good bonus and gratification. Sorry for this moody post, but I have seen going our flag carrier that way, and I really hate what they are doing to *my* MH product.

another step away from 5* airline. IMHO a good meal on board makes a lot up for the perceived flight quality. And, after all, inflight services are the only difference (except for fares) perceived by the customer between a LCC and a FFC.

my sources say that cnn got something wrong in their article. None of the manufactureres confirmed the order, and there is no confirmation from thai airways either. Also as pieter stated, the product selection is not that reasonable. What I heared is that thai is planning and evaluating and will announce some orders in the next time...

Surprise Surprise! In my today's mail was a big envelope from Malaysian Airlines Marketing&Promotions Department, with a copy of August's Going Places magazine, together with a nice letter where they thank me for my interest and patronage... Now that's a nice move...