Back where i belong....

2 Feb, late in the PM

I’m home….. we took off a little after 4.30pm….. Radisson is a fantastic hotel, I had no complaints whatsoever…. But still, I’d rather swap arriving in KL as scheduled rather than stay the additional 14 hours…..

Drama to get to the airport, we only received the call from the hotel 10 minutes before our airport shuttle to the airport…. We could not fit all the MAS passengers holed up in Radisson into the van, so AIO and I had to wait for the next shuttle to come….. I found out that the hotel was only informed (by MAS presumably) to get the passengers to the airport 5 minutes before I got the call from the hotel…..

Fantastic customer service, once again provided by MAS….. One must wonder how important passengers are to MAS, for us to be treated this way…… But it is of little consequence now, I’m finally home, and that’s all that matters….. Now if only I didn’t have to go back there again in a weeks time….. sigh…….

Fog Strikes Again!!

1 Feb 07, PM

I don’t feel like flying today, thought the pilot….. Why would I want to fly myself to Dhaka….. After a very brief discussion with the co-pilot, they both came to a consensus, we both don’t want to fly to a place with very little to offer….. Oh, there’s a fog in Dhaka you say, they tell their supervisor…… It wouldn’t be safe for us to land there, we could crash, and god only knows how many passenger casualties we will face…. It would be much better if we were to stay in KL……

This was a possible scenario behind why my flight was delayed….. We were told to go home by airport staff at the airport entrance….. Impossible we thought, our home was precisely where we were trying to get to…. We’ve waited 4 weeks for this day to come, and now that the day is here, you’re telling me that I cant fly back home??!!!

It was 11.45pm, our flight was due to depart at 1.40am, but we were told that the flight would not be taking off…. Delayed till 1600 was what we read on their notice board....We marched off to the MAS office to demand for an explanation….rescheduled was the term used by the MAS Dhaka Station Manager ….And it was not possible to take off any earlier than 4.00pm, more than 14 hours later…. Simply because the plane never left KL…… There was no plane available to fly us home….. Ridiculous was what we told him….. Another 2 electrical engineers who had arrived at the airport earlier stood there, and continued where we left off when we went silent, pondering on the options available to us….. which was none at that time…..

In the end, we were booked into the Radisson Hotel, a more than decent 5 star hotel….. It was very nice, but it was of very little consolation to us as we were all looking forward to getting out of Bangladesh….. I’ve been affected by the damn fog twice in a little more than a month now….. It almost feels like the fog is following me, intent on ruining whatever plans I have for myself…..