Using the excuse of the business part of the trip I had the excellent Alphadrive take my wife and I from Cambridge to LHR. It was nice to avoid the original plan of driving down ourselves as I find LHR somewhat terrifying to navigate. Easy trip down, got there a little before 8pm ready for the 10pm departure.
First time in a while at Terminal 4, and very impressed. Nice and tidy, lots of space for well organised Tensa barriers. Either the place was unusually empty or it has actually achieved a sensible efficiency at the check-in desks. The helpful staff at the Malaysian Airlines desk confirmed that the flight was almost empty, and we should get the row to ourselves.
Made it past the huge 'dump your liquids here' zone without too much delay, mostly by accidentally not noticing the huge line stretching across the terminal and nipping in when they opened the barrier. Smiled and said hello to the lady managing the security queues as I was in a good mood, was then rewarded by being shuffled off in to the fast track line on the left. That went well until a wheelchair user caused some delays.
A quick shop and burger in Bridges seemed to pass the time well enough and boarding went smoothly. We were sat in 34DE at my request, as I can't stand the window sections on the Boeing 3-4-3 configs. I like aisle seats, and having two people wanting to climb over me always fills me with dread, so centre section it was. Even before take off the cabin crew were suggesting small groups move further back, as load in economy was probably only 30%. We had the 4 seats to ourselves, so spread out a little. I don't think we would have been so fortunate on the noon MH flight, as that had been showing as full so overnight is definitely the way to go. It also leads well into an overnight stop, as mentioned in my other report.
Fairly dull flight. Basic economy seats but with a good 34" pitch. Above average food; always take the curry option as Malaysia is famed for them, and unlike so many airline meals they actually travel well and taste great.
The entertainment system was ancient, yet had had a clever upgrade somehow to enable AVOD. Basically the magazine gave you channel numbers for the 20 or so films. You could cycle through them only with channel up/down, and since they often had A,B,C variants with other language tracks that could be a lot of clicking. The neat part was that the coloured keys gave you FF/REW, pressing stop twice went back to the start, and pause worked as expected. So while channel hoping you'd find yourself in the middle of a film, but could easily restart it. Worked a treat, but the expected Spaceship Yamato on channel 43 was strangely absent
Landed on time the beautiful airport that is Kuala Lumpur Airport. Through very quickly and efficiently, even better as they suggested my wife (Malaysian) take me through with her in the empty family lane, thus avoiding the usual Foreigners queue. Next time I really must take a walk through the outdoor rain forest in the centre of the airside atrium.
