Friday the 13th and its effects

Hi folks...

Due to some rather unforeseen circumstances, I had to arrange for a flight to Kuantan last Friday, which happened to be an infamous Friday the 13th... I somehow had a gut feeling that things on that day won't be in my favour.. As it turns out it turned out to be very true... Upon my check-in at KL Sentral, the MAS counter staff told me that my flight to Kuantan had been retimed to 7:40pm instead of 5:10pm as per the regular flight schedule.

After taking the Express Rail Link to KLIA, I decided to catch up with my ex-colleague at the Pan Pacific KLIA, having coffee and chatting over the latest updates between the both of us whiled away some of the time that I thought I had till 7:00pm, decided to go to the counter one more time to see if there were further updates.. I was flabbergasted when the staff told me that the flight had been further delayed until 9:00pm and the worst part was that they couldn't confirm if the flight was actually going to take off at this new timing. A very big BOO to the Management of MAS for not being able to arrange other alternatives...

It was a nightmare, just imagine you arriving at the airport and upon checking the details at the information board, realise that almost all domestic flights were delayed. truly worried and luckily my boss was very sympathetic towards the whole situation.. This fiasco meant that I had to skip having dinner with my bosses and colleagues, and to make up for not eating with them, I went into the MAS Golden Lounge where a myriad of passengers looked rather lost... Their flights had also been delayed and some of them were in a rush to catch their onward connecting flights.. Having been in that situation before, I could relate to that.

I was ever so thankful that I bought Business Class tickets, though it's only a short trip I could still enjoy the lounge facilities at the Airport This also meant that I didn't have to fork out anything extra food, drinks and snacks.. Moreover, if i had to buy anything that would have cost me more $$$.

Fast forward a couple of hours later, we were all excited when finally the ground staff announced that the flight to Kuantan is now ready for boarding.. I was a bit sceptical about the whole thing and true enough as we were all strapped into the seat, the Captain of the plane told us that an RMAF helicopter went down around 9:35am on Friday. I thought to myself that the missing helicopter could have also been the cause for the delay in almost all daily flights.. According to this mornings weekend newspapers, the helicopter mysteriously just after 10 minutes out of the old airport in Sg Besi. Search parties are still being deployed for the search, certainly hoping that all 6 of them on the helicopter will be found soon...

In short, things never seem to go your way on a Friday the 13th... So all of you beware of this in future... More updates coming soon...