MAS Passenger Shares Horror Story On How His Flight Was Delayed For 19 Hours

Josh Awang detailed his account on how the national carrier failed to professionally handle the delays for his flight MH187, leaving passengers waiting without information.

Passengers of flight MH187 were scheduled to depart from Mumbai, India to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 8 September at 2am that day but by 2.30am, they were still sitting in the boarding lounge.

Josh suspected something was amiss and pressured the airport staff for answers. The other passengers follow suit to corner the airport staff for answers after that.

It was only after that incident that the staff revealed that the new departure time was going to be at 5am, three hours later than the scheduled time.

Although the staff told passengers that the new departure time was going to be at 5pm, a little while later, they revised it to 6am.

"A little while later some more, it was revised to 10:00am. But then they said they were not sure."

"And we then received an electronic notice from MAS that the flight will be 5pm instead but the staff on the ground were not aware of this nor could they confirm if this was true," Josh wrote in a Facebook post.

Unfortunately, the airport staff had no clue or any further information on the flight.

He added that the group of passengers were compensated with hotel rooms at this point but it took the airline four hours to transport the group of 80 to the hotel, which was just 1.6km away.

"In all that time, they made only one electronic announcement over the PA system. We did not receive any updates or advisory thereafter and had to rely on going up to the airport staff to press them for answers," Josh said.

"They said it was airport rules to not make any announcement over the PA except to announce the departure of flight."

"The next four hours were many angry passengers going back and forth to fact find, and relying highly on intuition like a herd of cows moving about from boarding to bus to the carousel to immigration."

He added that no one was there to assist the stranded passengers with their taxi ride, so everyone was fighting to get their own ride.

Josh was furious when upon their arrival at the hotel, the MH187 passengers were told to share rooms while the MAS crew got one room each.

"MAS had instructed the hotel to put everyone in twin sharing rooms, even if it means sharing with a stranger!"

He pointed out that there was a single Muslim girl travelling in the group, and was left wondering if she too, had to suffer the same fate as the rest of them.

"Wonder what happened to her and if she was forced to share a room also, and what if it had to be a man?"

According to Josh, no information was given as to what time is the next possible flight time was and there was no notice on when to check again.

"Everyone has to go up to the hotel staff to check for themselves!" he said.

Finally, the flight departed at 9pm on 8 September, 19 hours later and after seven revisions.

Following his bad experience, Josh wrote to MAS' customer service to demand an explanation yet they failed to respond him on the matter after five days.