My recent trip to Taiwan was pretty uneventful, until my flight back to Penang, on Malaysia Airlines via KL. MAS operates at Terminal 1 at Taipei (TaoYuan) International airport.
MAS operates a row of check in counters opposite or facing a local Taiwanese airlines. Unfortunately for me, there was such a huge crowd waiting to check-in at the Taiwanese airline (must had been a tour group or something), that the crowd spilled over and totally blocked the access to the economy class check-in counters for MAS. A other passengers other than myself tried to squeeze our way to the check-in counter, but was unable to. There was a Caucasian male and a Caucasian female in front of me. The Caucasian male as quite resourceful and asked the lady at the First Class check-in counter for MAS which was unaffected by the crowd, if he could check in there even though he is holding economy class tickets. The lady at the check-in counter gave a big smile and willingly obliged. Great! I could avoid the crowd, or so i thought.
And so the caucasian male got his boarding pass, and so did the caucasian female who approached the first class check-in counter after him. When it came to my turn, the lady gave a 'fake' sympathetic look and asked me to push my way to the economy class check-in counters as the counter she was manning is exclusively for First Class and Golden Club members only. What the hell was that!!! I asked her to take a look at the crowded economy class check-in counters and said i couldn't even get into line there. Furthermore, there weren't any first class passengers waiting behind me. She can only managed a mumbled 'sorry, i can't help'. I then questioned her why she help the earlier two Caucasian passengers with their boarding pass but can't do the same for me. She pretended she could not understand me and gave me a puzzled look.... Furious, i went into a patronizing tone and said in a very slow manner "Jussst nowww youuu allowwed the earlierrr twoo passengggers tooooo check-innnn why can'tttt youuuu doooo theeee sammme forrrr meeeee?" Thinking back, i must hv sounded like the fish in 'Finding Nemo' speaking in whale language. :)
Sensing that i was getting annoyed, she tried to safe face and mentioned that she could get me my boarding pass but i had to wait a while because she was busy with something... A few seconds of fumbling around the counter doing actually nothing, she got me my boarding pass.
Talk about double standards and discrimination!!! Malaysia Airlines? I am not so sure what is so 'Malaysia' about this airline.
So that was that, and i had a quick breakfast and bought some stuff to be brought back home before boarding the plane. Shortly after take-off, we heard a loud bang in the plane. Actually, i wouldn't have given in any further thoughts until the pilot made an announcement a few minutes later explaining that the loud bang was due to a lighting striking the plane just as we were taking off.
Ooopss.... But that was not the worrisome part, the part that scared we was when he mentioned that they were running systems diagnostic checks of the plane to make sure that everything was fine. But we were already thousands of feet up in the air!!!What if the lightning did do some damage???? Thankfully everything was fine, and the plane landed safely in KLIA some 4 hours later.
My first long distance flight with MAS, and it turned out to be quite an adventure.
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