After a couple more highly disappointing MH Malaysia Airlines business class flights into KUL, I am booking AirAsia again with Fast Pass.

The fact that flying a LCC in Economy is better than their business class experience should be quite embarrasing for Malaysia Airlines. These are the reasons:


1. Flying out of and into HKT on Malaysia Airlines, both departure and arrival had bus gates assigned. Not a nice start to a business class flight to be standing in a packed bus in front of the plane for 10 min until the doors open and you are allowed to lug your business class carry-on up the stairs. Also the bus gate waiting hall at HKT is extremely noisy, chaotic and unpleasant.

2. The MH flights arrive at KUL Terminal 1 as opposed KLIA2. Immigration queue at KUL Terminal 1 was almost an hour, very hot, I am keeping fit and almost passed out. It's wasting too much time if you are only stopping over in KUL for one night or positioning for a longer flight. Malaysia Airlines do not offer to buy anything like fast track immigration afaik, and there is no business class immigration lane. This is a huge difference to the positive experience I described in my original post with AirAsia Fast Pass at KLIA 2 arrivals.

3. The food on Malaysia Airlines still has not really improved after their catering issues. On one flight I was only offered 2 vegetarian options in business class, as the Chicken Satay was already gone. Offered some cheap economy chicken meal that looked like a can of cat food. The other flights had low quality meals that may as well have been Economy meals. Seriously might as well fly Air Asia and opt-out of any food on the 1h 25m flight. MH only offers water, orange juice or apple juice. You can stick with the two bags of peanuts or just fly AirAsia and either not expect anything or book the exact meal you want.



4. The business class seats on Malaysia Airlines 737-800 have these annoying black plastic pieces under the seat in front of you so that your laptop bag can only fit if it is very flat. The aisle seat in business class has this metal support rod right in the middle, so you can not store your backpack / laptop bag there at all. May as well fly AirAsia and sit in Eco for the short flight.





5. AirAsia allows you to book and pay for the exact amount of checked bags you need. Up to 60kg! The Fast Pass option allows two pieces of carry-on, 7kg + 7kg, which is very good if your trip includes business class flights and you travel with business class type carry-on. No need to fear LCC carry-on restrictions. No disadvantage over MH business class.

6. Malaysia Airlines IFE on the HKT-KUL route: No screens, you have to connect to their wifi and use your own device. If it works ... I tried to watch the flight info ... this is what it looked like:





The only possibly reason for booking MH on this route and possibly other short regional routes into KUL is the Oneworld status earning. There is simply no value. I have mentally blacklisted Malaysia Airlines several times now and OW status earning led me to book it again and again but no more. Even if it was cheaper. If I am in a rush to enter KUL, I wouldn't fly MH if it was free.