Continuing our journey on Air Asia X:
11/08/10 Air Asia X D7 2009 STN-KUL 2100/1700+1 A340-313X Rego 9M-XAB
After a glorious summer day in the West End, we headed back on a rush hour train from Liverpool St to Stansted Airport. The check-in was quite fast and efficient from the UK service operator, and we went to get some Pret A Manger sandwiches for our long flight to KL! Took the dodgy little terminal train to Gate 6 to find the same aircraft 9M-XAB doing this flight - Air Asia X only have 2 A340's on the London run, so you've got a 50/50 chance of being back on the same aircraft. Clare and I were in 16A & 16C, with 16B spare between us, among the very few spare seats on the plane. One funny point here, in the same 3 seats we were sitting in 9 days before (16A/B/C), I noticed 16A & C had safety cards for an A340, and 16B had a safety card for an A330 - and nothing had changed this time! The flight time was about 12 ½ hours at a cruise of 39,000 feet – ½ the flight in darkness and ½ in daylight, but they kept the shades down for the duration. I didn’t notice much turbulence but definitely slept some of the way thanks to the awesome legroom in these bulkhead seats. We had the “European” meals on this sector instead of the Malaysian meals, and they definitely weren’t as good. Nothing wrong with shepherd’s pie & little pieces of boiled veg, etc. – but we preferred the Malaysian food. We landed on time just before 5pm, and had to walk some distance across the tarmac past 3 A330’s to the terminal building. Would have taken some good shots, but they actually announce on the plane that tarmac photography is strictly prohibited, although that didn’t stop some of the Chinese people boarding one of the A330’s! The Customs line at the KUL LCCT was a lot shorter today (thank God) and we took the “Skybus” to KL Sentral Station for RM9 (about 3 bucks). Then a quick cab ride to Bukit Bintang for 2 nights of absolute luxury at the JW Marriott KL.
14/08/10 Air Asia X D7 2702 KUL-OOL 2125/0725+1 A330-343X Rego 9M-XXF
It was hard to leave the beautiful Marriott, but we took the "KLIA Ekspres" train to the airport, with a bus connection at Salak Tinggi station to the KUL LCCT. This was RM12.50 each - a
very fast train and no arguments about the price! By this point in our journey, we were quite familiar with the LCCT - slightly shabby for a fairly new building, but serving a functional purpose and well trodden day after day. It has a big 24hrs Macca's as well, loads of coffee shops and a free Wifi signal throughout. You can't check-in online for Air Asia X flights to Australia, so we double checked our 15kg bag weights on the scales, then got in the queue for our final flight. Rain was falling gently as we crossed the tarmac with our red "Air Asia" umbrellas, dumping them on the ground at the foot of the aircraft stairs. 9M-XXF was delivered a little over a month ago, so nice and fresh inside. Confident take off with the familiar buzz of the RR Trent engines, throttled off (which is quite noticable), through the rain clouds, tracking straight to Bali, over Broome, then straight across Australia to Brisbane, south down the Gold Coast with Surfers Paradise on our right hand side, then a series of right turns to line up for on Runway 32, northbound - using almost the entire runway length to come to a stop! Took about an hour to get out of the airport, and watched 9M-XXF scream off again as we drove along the Gold Coast Highway back to Brisvegas.
Photo of 9M-XXE (OOL-KUL) kindly taken by Tim Bowrey on the day of departure, 01 Aug 2010:
Onboard 9M-XAB (KUL-STN), lifting off from KLIA:
KUL-STN (4) (Large) by
clare&joe, on Flickr
Air Asia X "eplayer", available for rental on many flights:
KUL-STN (8) (Large) by
clare&joe, on Flickr
The green fields of England looked a tad dry:
KUL-STN (11) (Large) by
clare&joe, on Flickr
9M-XAB loading at London Stansted for the flight back to KLIA, with UPS at the freight terminal in the background:
STN-KUL (2) (Large) by
clare&joe, on Flickr