I never seem to have a good day flying Malaysia Airlines, but my most recent trip to Singapore took the cake as possibly the worst ground experience I had ever had with Malaysia Airlines.
To begin, Malaysia Airlines had sent out a notification that it's 7:50am flight had been delayed to 8:05am. This was already peculiar, given that the delay was only an extra 15 minutes, and I didn't understand why they needed to communicate such a minor delay.
I arrived at the airport several hours before my flight to visit the Plaza Premium First lounge again. Up to this point, nothing has been unusual so far.
Malaysia Airlines tends to open their gates slightly later than usual, so I stayed at the lounge until 7:15am. At exactly 7:15am, I left the lounge and headed to Gate G2, which was just adjacent to the lounge. Not surprisingly, the gate hasn't even opened and there was already a long queue forming.
At 7:45am, after standing in the queue for a good 30 minutes, the gate was still closed! A few moments later, an airport staff attendant pushing a wheelchair-bound traveller was shouting at us in the queue that the gate was changed to Gate H8. Now, gate changes are common in the airline industry, but the poor communication itself, was not.
Our gate was moved to H8 from G2, at the absolute opposite end of the terminal, which required a minimum 15-20 minute walk.
There was zero communication via mobile (no SMS notifications, no in-app notifications, and no emails) to notify us of the change.
The change took place literally 15 minutes before scheduled take-off.
This was literally the first flight of the day to Singapore, giving MAS plenty of time beforehand to notify passengers of any issues.
Once again, as a seasoned traveller, I'm very well aware that gate changes happen, mostly due to aircraft swaps, which in itself are due to unexpected technical errors. In my case, I queried several staff on duty, and it seems that the issue was indeed due to an aircraft technical issue. However, surely the airline must have some good reason for travellers to find out about this swap from a third-party staff?
Not surprisingly, I was asked by several other travellers on the queue about whether this was the correct gate. There were even several elderly travellers seen rushing to the new gate for fear of missing their flights. Come on MAS!
Inevitable Delay
Of course, with our new gate H8 opening at 7:56am, exactly 9 minutes before scheduled departure, you'd certainly be hoping there wouldn't be a delay.
To make matters even worse, there was a long queue forming at Gate H8, as there was another concurrent Batik Air flight to Haikou departing from Gate H10, meaning that security screening had to be evenly conducted between two flights.
The final hiccup of the flight was the poor boarding process by the ground staff. Granted, this happens at every airport in the world, whereby passengers simply rush to the boarding gate despite their boarding group not being called yet. In my case, while boarding group 1 was called first, boarding group 2 was called up concurrently a few seconds later, leading to more bottlenecks boarding the flight.
Final Thoughts
I fly MAS frequently between KL-Singapore, mostly due to cheap award availability, but with the recent devaluation, I'll be carefully considering my options. I previously wrote about how the KL-Singapore Economy Class ticket costs just 3,300 Enrich Miles. It has now risen to 5,400 Enrich Miles per ticket, a crazy 63% increase!
With the value slowly dissipating and the Malaysia Airlines ground experience becoming increasingly terrible, it's no surprise that most of my flights from KL-Singapore are 80% empty. Since this is ultimately a travel blog, I do encourage you to keep an eye for really good deals on Airasia, Jetstar and Scoot. You'll sometimes find KL-Singapore flights for less than RM70 on these airlines, which is an absolute steal.
To recap, a One-Way Economy class ticket from KL to Singapore costs 5,400 Enrich Miles + RM74 in fuel and taxes. As such, any other flight ticket on the same route that costs less than RM74 is indeed a good deal, unless of course, you're a big fan of the peanuts they serve on the short flight!
Last but not least, I sincerely hope Malaysia Airlines takes its communication seriously. I had a similar encounter with a delayed flight on Scoot in January 2024, whereby there was a last-minute aircraft swap due to a technical error. Guess what? They moved us literally to the gate adjacent to ours, and the flight continued to take-off on time. Of course, not to mention I received an SMS informing us of the gate change, together with an email apologizing for the delay and the subsequent new gate information.
I mean, at the end of the day, what's the point of having BMWs driving you to the gate if they can't even get the simple things right?
