Background
It has been a while since I last visited Miri, my mom’s hometown. In May, while chatting with mom about making a trip back during the next school holiday in September, we found a pretty good deal on Malindo Air.
Malindo once provided scheduled service between Kuala Lumpur and Miri, but had suspended the service, and recently resumed on 1st July 2016. Of the three carriers that provided direct service between Kuala Lumpur and Miri, Malindo surprisingly came out to be the cheapest option. Throw in the free baggage allowance, snack on board, and AVOD entertainment system, it was really not a difficult decision to choose it over Malaysia Airlines and Air Asia.
Check In
Malindo offers web check in 48 hours prior to scheduled departure. The system is fairly easy to use, and it allows passengers to select seats free of charge, a courtesy that gets two thumbs up from me. Once the formality was done, what was left was just to wait for departure date to come.
The weather was quite bad when we left home for airport at 4:30am in the morning. A storm that brought hail to some parts of Melaka was just beginning to die down.
A very wet journey to the airport
Photo 2 (By the time we reach airport, the rain had gone)
A rather busy KLIA terminal at 6:00am
Queuing up to drop our bags
Line for economy class check in is extremely long
After breakfast at one of the many F&B outlets, we made our way to domestic departure hall.
Pre-flight and Boarding
My recent few domestic travels have predominantly been with Air Asia, so it was quite pleasant to be back in KLIA domestic departure hall. Overall, the surrounding was quite pleasant and not over-crowded. Our flight was scheduled to depart from gate A9, one of the inner facing gates in Concourse A.
Shops in departure hall
KLIA2, Bunga Raya VIP Lounge, and the aircraft scheduled to perform our flight still parked at remote bay
The issue with gates at the inner side of the concourse was that aircraft could only be towed to gate after all scheduled departures were performed, as the taxi way could only accommodate one way traffic. Therefore, our aircraft could not be towed until flights from adjacent gates had left.
Our aircraft finally towed to gate
Ground service performed to get the aircraft ready
Boarding commenced 45 minutes late at 9:30am
Decent legroom
Touch screen AVOD entertainment system
Seat pocket contents
Push back & taxi to active runway
Being at gate A9 and active takeoff runway of 32R meant we literally needed to taxi across the entire airport to take off. On top of that, we were behind a MH A333 and several MH B738 on take off queue.
Push back complete and ready to go
Beginning of our long trek to 32R
The two B747 that nobody wanted to claim
Sepang F1 circuit in the distance
MH A333 on its takeoff roll
2 more MH B738 ahead of us
Finally our turn to enter active runway
Flight
Flight time from Kuala Lumpur to Miri was a short 2 hour. Weather was fine with occasional mild turbulence along the way. The touch screen AVOD entertainment system was turned on shortly after takeoff. It offered several movies and TV sitcoms. On top of that, there was also a complimentary snack service, whereby a cake, sausage roll, orange juice, water was offered. The movie and food kept passengers occupied, and very soon we made landfall and began descent to Miri from south. We landed at Miri Airport at approximately 12:00pm, a delay of 30 minutes from scheduled arrival time.
KLIA Satellite Terminal as seen from our takeoff run
Lift off
Entertainment system ready to do its job
River flowing out to South China Sea
Snack service in progress
A rather substantial offering
Overflying Riau Island
Airbrakes deployed to begin our descent
Flaps in landing configuration
Baggage claim after landing and immigration
Hi. Nice FR, very neat with light explanation. I never discovered cheap price from Malindo Air so may I know how much is the ticket? I I have flown with them for KUL-BKI route and yeah, they were excellent.
Look forward to read your next FR :)
I bought the ticket for a little less than RM160/return, so it was very good value.
I paid a little less than RM160 for the return ticket. I think it was good value for the service I received on this flight.
Nice trip! Thanks for sharing!
What???? What do you mean nobody wanted them?? I want one!!! :D
Thanks. I once read from somewhere that the owners of the B747 did not pay the parking fees to the airport management company and sort of left these two birds to rot at KLIA.
Oh, my! That's a very sad end for such beautiful machines! :(
Malindo Air is really re-branding as "Batik Air Malaysia", with livery and cabin crews uniform very similar to Batik Air in my country.
Great report, sir!!!
Salam dari Indonesia.
Thank you very much for reading my report. I noticed at times the flight was addressed as Batik Air in some reports. Now I know why.
That was a pretty good deal for this round trip. European airlines (legacy or LCC) don't provide an IFE on their short haul routes.
Thanks for sharing !
PS : it seems that nobody wants to claim ownership of these 747s, which says something about their actual condition.
My one and only intra European trip was an Amsterdam - Stavanger - Amsterdam to visit client. It was almost 20 years ago, and I had very little recollection of this journey other than it was onboard a very loud F70 of KLP Cityhopper on a rather chilly October.
I mean KLM
Nice report, thanks of much for sharing! Great pictures to go along with that. :)
I have always been pretty impressed by Malindo's service offering, it is pretty neat considering what is paid for. I quite like the concept of a hybrid LCC that Malindo has adopted.