Ryan Soh

The future is very bright for Malaysian aviation. Isn't there a plan to have an entire corridor of international airports all within spitting distance from one another? Langkawi, Penang, Ipoh, KLIA, Subang, Melaka... Awesome.

OMG... I seriously thought incidents like these (not lowering of gears) have been grappled with in CRM courses. Guess I was wrong. During my Human Performance Limitations course in flight school, one of the modules covered was the over reliance of the humans on computers and the gradual "supidifying" of the human brain due to this. Somehow the words of my instructor still rings eerily in my head today because he said "No matter how many procedures you have to fall back on, it is just a matter of when, and not if, should an incident occur because we are only human. Just pray it won't happen on your watch...". I guess luck ran out for these two pilots?

It is easier said than done. London is one of the world's focal financial point and a significant contributor to "O" in the O&D sector. As much as people like to bash Heathrow, I don't see the traffic dwindling in the near future.

Air Asia doesn't have stake holders to answer to? Air Asia doesn't run their decisions through their board before making them? MASEU should have stayed out of the food fight because comments like these only serve to cement my impression of their mindset and how far removed they are from reality. No airline only has one person calling all the shots. Business decisions are thoroughly discussed, analysed and studied before being pushed through. The only difference is what these two different parties do with the results of the studies and whether they want to act on it. It was always an easy excuse to blame your current predicament on government beauracracy and red tape. If the red tape is too thick, thin it. If you do not want to do that, then be prepared to be the laughing stock of the region. Look at Garuda and how they have transformed themselves. 100% government owned too!

With every ounce of their existence, they rightfully deserve this award. They have done tremendously well year on year and their relentless penchant to improve themselves is just amazing. So impressed I am, I will be flying on them again soon next month!

The problem with these LCC operations is that their aircraft scheduling is so tight! One delay here will cascade down to the entire operations. So TT perhaps made a calculated decision, rather delay the Hobart 100+ passengers than to have 1000+ passengers delayed due to the cascaded issue.

Sorry to dump cold water... But more than HALF of this article has nothing to do with the title at all!

If you are relying on Star Alliance to pull these people in, then it won't happen. Not even when Silkair isn't part of the group. If you are referring to Krisflyers, ah... then it will be a different story. However, in order to enjoy the fares you have now, you would still have to fly via your present M'sian port-of-calls to enjoy these fares. I have to point out that fares ex-SIN and ex-PEN / KUL / BKI / KCH are very substantially different with the former being exhorbitantly high. So I am not sure if you would want to fly a budget carrier into SIN, clear CIQ and re-check in for an SQ flight ex-SIN. The same logic applies when I fly MH ex-SIN, much cheaper when compared to you guys doing it ex-KUL to ... say... Sydney.

It is a Catch 22 situation with MH now, Tim. No one will fly them if the price is too high because their hardware ain't worth the penny. Charge low with ELF to fill up the seats but the yield isn't there, or worse, full plane but loss making.

As far as these destinations are concerned, unlikely you will see SQ. More likely Firefly, Jetstar, Tiger and Air Asia.

How well the airline performs can be directly linked to the development of the airport (KLIA), which in turns is linked to the country's economy. So the mitigating factors are many.

SINGAPORE: Singapore and Malaysian carriers will soon be able to fly freely between Changi and six new destinations in Malaysia after both countries agreed to expand their air services agreement. The new agreement gives carriers of both countries the rights to operate passenger services between Singapore and Malaysia’s Alor Setar, Bintulu, Labuan, Kerteh, Kota Bahru and Sibu. Carriers from both sides will each have traffic rights to operate 28 weekly passenger services to each of these destinations. The new agreement will also see an increase in the number of services to 10 existing destinations in Malaysia. Channel NewsAsia - Tuesday, October 20

Why can't MH maintain a daily service to DXB? Has all the traffic run over to EK?

Thanks Pieter... The confusion between "direct" and "nonstop" always gets me shifting about on my seat. Hehehehe... OCD I guess.

I think the title should read KUL-IST NONSTOP. KUL-CCU-DEL-BOM-ISB-IST is still considered a KUL-IST direct flight.

Does that surprise you? I never for one believed the 2012 deadline was ever going to be met.

I seriously doubt robbery was the motive for this incident. Have they set up road blocks along the Cengkareng tollway to inspect cars recently? My experiences with these supposedly road blocks in Jakarta were just merely "for show" or presence and those polisi were just goping through the motion. "Pak... Pak... terima kasih pak..." and off we went.

Then we have a problem on our hands don't we? "Good marketing" and "MAS" is never used in the same sentence.

HUH? KUL-ADL on the 737-800? Wouldn't that be a stretch?

I say serves that man right for ignoring the crew's orders to remain seated. There are some ME men who are still very alpha because the society there breeds this sort of behaviour and they WILL NOT take orders especially from a woman. I say again, serves them right.

This has been a long time coming. Better this that the airline failing altogether, yes? Routes like JFK-GRU should have been canned a long time ago together with RIO as this VFR-heavy route was a disaster from the start. Gone are the days of prestige routes especially when the shareholders now are clamouring for a piece of divident. ANA seems to have the correct model of having a significantly smaller international network, but they are all profitable. All the best to JAL.

In all honesty, this dommsday prediction has been has been thrown at SQ many times before and while no one really knows what the future holds, the airline has proven to be nimble enough to react to these challenges time after time so I do not expect this one to be any different. With their cost cutting initiatives in place and selling cheaper airfares are just one way of preventing the profit margin from suffering, but if this margin is squeezed it is stil a profit nevertheless. Otherwise, it is seriously "just another day" in airline operations.

KK Lee, indeed the million dollar question is whether MH will be able to fill those planes. No doubt the operating economics of the A380 is way lesser than the 744 but we are still talking about a 3 class plane of which very little of MH's network can support at present profitably. Perhaps LAX might be able to see their next A380 after all since SQ's snafoo with NRT.

Aziz, you are probably dredging up something the MH management do not wish to deal with at the moment. There is a very REAL concern where to deploy these GIGANTIC whalejets when they arrive. 3x daily KUL-LHR was unsustainable in rosy times which could only mean one thing - OVER CAPACITY. Now with the A380, you have an extra 200+ seats per flight which would probably even out to cancelling 3 or 4 of the 2nd LHR flight in a week. It is a tough risk but I am think perhaps the MH gang has a product to blow the competition out of the water to get people to fill up the seats... and these are probably people who would be willing to spend on a premium product from YCL all the way up front. MH has many challenges ahead of them because they do not belong to an alliance therefore it would be tough to poach newbies. They cannot do a EY/EK/QR (great product + competitive price) because it would bring them back to square one. The only OZ destination in the meantime which can support a 3 class service at present is SYD and even that is shaky at the moment. So where to fly this fleet of whalejets? Where? Where? Where?

My goodness... As for the gate changes, I can in a way understand what happened because gate assignment is a pre-arranged set up from before therefore when a delay occurs, the delayed flight will be assigned an opened gate since the original gate will be occupied by another flight. However, if the delay rolls over and the open gate is no longer available, then a change is required. Delay rolls some more, the other gate the flight is assigned to would be taken taken... so on and so forth, you get the idea. So while it is annoying, there is a very REAL and operational reason behind it. However, how the airline wants to handle the customer is at the end of the day, up to the management and not placating passengers on a 6 hour delay is not something I can tolerate. Perhaps providing refreshments during a delay is cost... But nickle and diming at the end of the day is penny wise pound foolish. Sorry to hear that even the crew was not apologetic about the delay.