I have not been impressed with the way Malaysian Airlines has dealt with Covid-19 related cancellations. I had a return from Bangkok to Delhi booked for mid-April, Over a 3 week period from mid-March I received a series of over a dozen emails changing the times and then the dates of my flights, before finally receiving an email stating that my flights had been cancelled.

When I 'phoned Malaysian to request a refund I was told that they could only offer me a voucher. I was prepared to accept a voucher, but wanted to know it could be used for bookings on their web-site, but was told it could only be used by 'phoning a call-centre; and in response to a further question I was advised that call-centres did not have access to the lower prices that are available online.

I tried the HUCA technique a few times, but got the same set of responses each time, so eventually disputed the charge with my (UK) credit card provider and swiftly had the price I paid for the ticket refunded. Six weeks has now elapsed, and the refund cannot now be reversed.

Various other flights I had booked with other Asian airlines were also cancelled, but I have received refunds from Vietnam Airlines and Thai Airways and an account credit from Air Asia.

Malaysian's attitude has left a very bad taste in my mouth, and thus I decided I should try to avoid flying with them in future; the problem however is that the two return BKK-DEL return trips a year I make with them provide me 720 BA tier points which are necessary to get me over the BA GGL requalification threshold. Although it would cost quite a lot more, the other One World option would be to fly with Cathay from Bangkok to Delhi which would earn me the same number of points, and despite the extra cost I was minded to do this in future.

BA’s announcement a couple of days ago that my current GGL status would be rolled over for a further year, and that to requalify for the year after that I would need only 2,250 tier points instead of 3,000, makes things even simpler. I can now take direct flights between Bangkok and Delhi, save a bit of money, and not have to worry about making up the missing tier points for at least two years.

I believe there are a lot of other equally p***ed-off, ex-Malaysian customers who will similarly be seeking to exclude MH from their travel plans in future, so I think Malaysian may come to regret their very short-sighted policy on cancelled flights.