EMPTY SEATS ON MALAYSIA AIRLINES

During boarding MH122 from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney in June this year, I was quite surprised that there were not many passengers during boarding. There were less than 50 passengers in the economy class cabin.

   The empty seats.

We have been flying Malaysia Airlines to Australia at least once or twice a year for the past 16 years. It's the first time I saw so many empty seats. Perhaps, there was something wrong with their sales and marketing strategies. This could be the reason that Malaysia Airlines had cut the number of their Australia weekly flights from 73 to 43 by terminating their Brisbane flights and reducing frequencies from Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide since last year. 

The new CEO of the airlines has vowed to introducing improved services for passengers both in flight and on the ground. However, I did not see any change - as usual, the queue for "drop bag" at KLIA was so long that it took us about 40 minutes just to drop our 2 pieces of baggage.   On board, I also did not see any improvement in their inflight services especially their inflight meals. Despite a very empty flight. Welcome drink like water or juice was only served 45 minutes after the seat belt sign was off.    

Packages of salted peanuts were passed around just before the welcome drink.  

The same old inflight meals - a main course of "rice with sweet and sour fish", cut fruits, a cake, a "cold" croissant and jam.

For this seven and a half hours flight, they maintained the twice meal services which they have been doing for years. It seemed that they had no new ideas in providing passengers with the better in flight services and meals.    

 2 hours before landing, coffee or tea was served with a packed sandwich.

There was nothing outstanding on this flight. Luckily, the inflight movies were reasonable. Malaysia Airlines should make changes to make passengers happy by changing their inflight services and quality of meals. They should work on a better serving schedule, say, at least 3 times with drinks and meals. Perhaps, ice cream before landing?

Malaysia Airlines used to be one of the top airlines in the world in term of services and food. Now it is not even listed. Here are the top 10 international airlines for food and services:

1. Singapore Airlines
2. Emirates
3. Etihad Airways
4. Qatar Airways
5. Cathay Pacific
6. Turkish Airlines
7. All Nippon Airways
8. Japan Airlines
9. Virgin Atlantic Airways
10. Thai Airways International