Greetings to everyone who likes to fly and read about flights!
In this review, dedicated to a flight from the capital of Malaysia to the capital of China, the departure point was the starting point of the route, and the arrival point was only a transfer airport.
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Route statistics. Flight CA872 was operated by Air China. Scheduled departure at 00.10, actual at 00.15. Arrival in Beijing is both scheduled and actual at 06.35. The flight time was 6 hours 20 minutes. The aircraft operating the flight was a Boeing 737 MAX8, registration number B-1396.
Background
The ticket for this route was purchased approximately 2 months before departure - enough time to choose a seat on board, which I decided to do without delaying the matter. In order to manage your booking, you need to go to the airline’s website and follow simple and intuitive steps. This is true for most airlines, but not for Air China. Their website is deeply and hopelessly glitchy. However, there is also an application. The application works decently, but in order to register there, you need to enter your phone number, for confirmation of which you should receive an SMS. But the trouble is that the SMS did not arrive to the Russian number! A solution was found, and it is very strange. It turns out that if you choose the region code +7 not Russian, but Kazakh, and after 7 enter the digits of your number, then oh, a miracle! SMS has arrived! In the app you can select a seat, order additional services, and, in general, do everything that is usually offered in the apps and websites of other airlines. But there was no point in doing anything in the application, since even before I could register in it, I contacted a representative of the airline and asked for a window seat for this segment and booked a free hotel during the transfer in Beijing - my tariff allowed do it. The next day, a letter arrived in the mail with a successful confirmation of the reservation at the Beijing Fuyong Yulong International Hotel. With the confirmation they sent the reservation number and instructions on how to use it. The transit was about 7 and a half hours and occurred during daylight hours. In general, this is the background story. The successful outcome of the unsuccessful struggle with the airline’s website and the choice of seats suggested that everything would continue to go swimmingly, but the Chinese would not be Chinese if they had not messed something up. But I won’t get ahead of myself.
According to tradition, a couple of touches about the departure point.
Kuala Lumpur is a city of bustle and skyscrapers. What is this city like? The association that comes to mind if you find yourself in the thick of the city bustle is the city from the science fiction film “The 5th Element” starring Bruce Willis. Densely packed skyscrapers, confusing road junctions, crowds of people scurrying here and there, advertising wherever possible, a monorail with trains rushing overhead..
Even though this is typical Asia, The city is actively developing, has a developed infrastructure, amenities for residents and guests of the city. For me personally, there is only one drawback - the climate. Very high humidity and daily rains exhaust the unprepared average person.
The road to the airport.
The airport in Kuala Lumpur is located quite far from the city - about 60 km. You can get there by high-speed train, which covers this distance in 30-40 minutes. The cost of this pleasure is 55 ringgit per person. But since I was not alone (there were two of us and two pieces of luggage), it was more logical to take a taxi, the ride on which was only 70 ringgit for everyone. To understand prices in rubles, you need to roughly multiply these numbers by 20.
Taxis in the city are cheap. A tip for those who find themselves in Kuala Lumpur - download the Grab app and order a taxi using it. Payment in cash at the end of the journey. The cost of a short-distance trip is equal to the cost of travel on the Moscow metro. Taxi drivers in Kuala Lumpur are very polite and friendly. Called via Grab. We started our way to the airport from the Pavilion - a huge mall, one of the centers of attraction for residents and guests of the city. We are driving at the beginning of the journey, in what is still Kuala Lumpur:
The taxi driver drove along endless highways. In the outlying areas, Kuala Lumpur resembled Moscow with its faceless high-rise buildings. It was as if we were driving past Butovo or Altufyevo:
Almost fifty more kilometers to go:
At some point we broke free from the urban development, and it seemed that until the airport there would now be only greenery around:
But that was not the case, construction began again - suburbs indistinguishable from the Moscow region. Well, why not Krasnogorsk, which has the same mushroom-shaped structure as in the picture below?:
Highways again:
Finally, there were signs of the proximity of the airport - the control tower was visible from behind the dense vegetation:
And then the terminal itself and even the plane:
Approaching the terminal:
In place! Getting out of the taxi, I take a photo of the entrance to the terminal, through the glass windows of which I see myself in the reflection, and the dense vegetation behind:
Terminal 1 of Kuala Lumpur Airport
The approach to the departures area looks like this:
Looking back from the same point at the control tower:
Entering the terminal building:
We arrived at the airport very early - 6 hours before departure. The fact is that check-out time from the apartment is 12 noon. We hung out in the Pavilion for 5 hours, limited in freedom of movement by suitcases, an hour to travel, and planned to kill the remaining time at the airport. We decided to go to the airport before dark to take a look at the surroundings at the same time. Therefore, having arrived at the airport at 18:00, check-in for the flight was not yet open. At the information desk located in the middle of the hall, here:
I found out that registration will open exactly three hours in advance at the counters marked with the letter F.
Well, there are 3 hours of free time ahead. I decided to kill him not by sitting tediously on a chair, but by exploring the entire huge complex of terminal No. 1.
The check-in hall was seething with passengers and traffic:
Initially, having found free seats, we dropped our suitcases here. The fellow traveler stayed, but I went deeper into the terminal. I went out to the opposite side, where there were cozy cafes surrounded by greenery:
It was much calmer here due to the lack of registration desks nearby and there were many more empty seats:
Through the windows it was clear that the area was densely planted with trees, behind which the boards of Malaysia airlines and some other buildings similar to the terminal could be seen:
Since it was much more comfortable here, we moved our suitcases here, and I went to explore the terminal further. What seemed to me to be the opposite side (from the entrance) of the terminal was in fact not so. In the middle of this opposite side there were two corridors that led even further. I walk along one of them:
On one side of the corridor there was a window onto the street, surrounded by greenery:
On the other - a view from above the level below:
Meanwhile, I walk further along the corridor and pay attention to the sign - Viewing Area. That is, there should be an observation deck there:
Further along the corridor there is a McDonald's. He has his own feature - an autonomous robot waiter, and more than one. They scurried along the corridors either with empty trays or with an order:
When the robot moved with an order, the tray with it was hidden under a zipped cloak so that those passing by would not be tempted to take burger.
The corridor with McDonald's and Burger Kings led me to another waiting room:
This room was occupied mainly by locals. Apparently, few tourists knew about its existence, since, in principle, few passengers reached here. Firstly, this is still the area before check-in, and secondly, to get here, you had to stumble upon one of two inconspicuous corridors:
But the views from here to the aircraft parking areas were simply magnificent. Opposite the front window there was a direct view of the two-level "car-plane" intersection, through which a Malaysian Airlines A-330 was passing after landing:
On the left was the parking lot of the Malaysian branch of the Indonesian airline Batik Air (a division Lion Air):
The aforementioned Malaysian A-330 taxied into their company:
Behind it other terminals were visible. It was impossible to disassemble cargo or passenger ones. Airplanes of airlines foreign to Malaysia were visible there: Turkish, China Southern. To the left (pictured below), in the company of another Malaysian A330, one could make out the liveries of Ethiopian, Singapure Airlines, something else unfamiliar to me (it looked like it was Royal Brunei), and the unusual colorful livery of Emirates A-380:
By the way, Ethiopian does not fly directly to Kuala Lumpur, but operates a flight “killing two birds with one stone” - first it flies to Singapore, and from there it drives its wide-body aircraft to Kuala Lumpur, by the way, providing passengers full meals in this area, lasting only about an hour.
At the other end of this hall - on the right side, through the window, the parking lot of narrow-body aircraft of Malaysia Airlines was visible:
When the lens got closer, one could see the buildings of terminal No. 2 with parking lots, which were dominated by the low-cost Malaysian carrier Air Asia (below in the photo at the top right):
This appendix was from myself a truly worthy observation platform, with windows from ceiling to floor, accessible not only to the passenger, but also to those seeing off and to any person in general:
I leave this platform along another parallel corridor, along which, also as in the first corridor, there are cafes:
and, on the other hand, a view of the level below:
At this level, an interesting structure was visible, filled with mock-ups of aircraft of various airlines. Airlines, apparently, were selected only those that fly to terminal 1 of this airport:
I returned to the huge check-in hall. The terminal building looked colorful and modern:
Since there was still a lot of time ahead, I decided to leave the terminal and inspect it from the outside. I go outside, once again feeling the Malaysian humidity:
The approach to the departure area was quite extensive and I decided to walk from one end of the terminal to the other. Behind the terminal building, on both sides, the road continued and was fenced off with massive railings, through which one could observe other airport infrastructure. View of the parking lot:
The terminal building from the outside and to the right - view of the Malaysia Airlines aircraft parking lot:
Below me, somewhere far below, there was a high-speed railway line connecting both terminals with the center of Kuala Lumpur. View of the line towards terminal No. 1:
The train coming from the city first goes to terminal No. 1 (from which I am viewing) and then goes to terminal No. 2. In the photo below - the line goes to terminal No. 2:
I stood in the humid atmosphere, inhaling the heavy tropical air, finally feeling the Malaysian microclimate. Watched the planes take off. Eh, I didn’t expect Malaysia to be so developed, both infrastructurally and technologically. And I didn’t want to fly away from here at all.. The sun was setting:
A high-speed express train slowly moving to Terminal No. 2. I had the opportunity to ride on one a week earlier, when I flew to Malaysia from an even more beautiful country. His speed was very impressive. Moscow Aeroexpress trains are far from it in this regard:
I’m heading to the other side of the terminal fait was raining. Before this, during the entire week of our stay here, it rained in the afternoon. But in the sky, hints of it were more obvious:
I pass by a beautiful installation crowning the entrance to the departure zone:
I reached the other end terminal:
On the other side of the facade the picture was similar. The end of the building ended with a view of the railway platform and the terminal with gates:
After taking a walk outside along the terminal, I returned inside the building under the air conditioning. From the window I took a picture of the sun, which had already touched the horizon, and of the place from which I had just watched planes and trains take off:
I went to McDonald's and took the standard set for take-out. Prices at the airport, as is usually the case in civilized countries, were practically no different from prices in the city. 400 rubles per set is more than affordable:
I walked around the hall, photographed all sorts of unusual things. For example, this (but I still didn’t understand what it was):
Or here’s an aquarium where big fish swam:
The time was approaching 21:00, and this meant that check-in for our flight would soon open. I said above that we were flying together, but the ticket was purchased separately and on different dates. I already knew the seat (32A), but on the second ticket there was no assigned seat. Therefore, we went to the Air China check-in counters before everyone else, so that we could take seats next to each other, that is, 32B:
The passengers on this flight gradually gathered, but there were not many of them. We approach the check-in counter:
We ask for seat 32B and get it without any problems:
My boarding pass:
The girl at the check-in desk said that the plane would not be full or even half full. After that, we agreed that we would not sit next to each other, but would be one of the last to board and take seats by the window each, so that on the upcoming night flight we would have the opportunity to sleep on three seats in a row.
We go through all the controls after check-in and baggage drop off:
We go down the escalator down to passport control:
After that we go to customs inspection :
Here, existing hand luggage is run through the scanner:
After customs inspection, we pass by the very same models of airplanes that we saw from above:
We go further and from the sign it becomes clear that we are heading to our gate the bus will take you:
We go down to a lower level and again plunge into the humid air of Malaysia:
The bus will take you along the road that we observed from the observation deck. Now it became clear that there are also terminals of this terminal No. 1 (sorry for the taftology), and I saw them from the observation deck, thinking that they were possibly cargo, and near which there were planes of foreign airlines:
The bus brought us to the new building. We go to the right, to gate C23:
Follow the signs to it:
Having reached a large round structure resting on the ceiling, with the same round huge information desk in the middle, we go out into another long hall:
Lord, what a huge airport here in Kuala Lumpur! After all, there is more than one such long hall here; there are four of them, fanning out from the central round hall. We reached our gate:
But he hasn’t even announced that the flight to Beijing will take place from here. Gate C21 was also located here, where they boarded to Adelaide, Australia with the declared carrier Turkish Airlines:
Probably, the Turks fly there from Istanbul with an intermediate landing here in Kuala Lumpur. There were no empty seats near our gate:
They asked the employee when our gate would open, they answered that only in an hour. We decided to go back to the huge hall. We go far, we use a travelator:
We pass by a facility where you can fill containers with drinking water:
In the huge central hall there are shops and cafes:
Some kind of stand with a list of airlines. On what principle they were assembled remains a mystery to me:
We found a cozy place by the window, where we sat for the remaining time before boarding:
On the street It was already completely dark and it was clear that there was a thicket of vegetation just outside the window. Even an artificial waterfall was visible. During the day it must be incredibly beautiful here. I brought the phone lens close to the glass in order to minimize glare, and took several pictures:
It felt like an impenetrable jungle stretched just outside the window. After 45 minutes we returned to our gate. It had not yet been opened, but there were free seats and a charging station nearby:
At the gate opposite there was a plane boarding to London:
Ours was opened gate:
Search, passport and boarding checks:
Inside the gate premises it was free:
Where are all the passengers? The girl at the front desk was right. The maximum I could count was 35-40 people, the overwhelming majority were Chinese. While waiting for boarding to begin:
There was also a charging station here, and I took advantage of the moment, despite the fact that in Chinese Maxes (Boeing737MAX), unlike others, which had to fly, there was a USB connector:
By the way, I almost forgot about the hero of this review. Here he is, waiting for his passengers:
When boarding began, not even 5 minutes had passed before almost the entire handful of passengers entered the jet bridge. Only a few, as is usually the case, began to dig inappropriately. He also sent his companion on the plane so that she would take the 32nd row on the left, intending to enter among the last ones and sit in the three empty seats somewhere next to her. The last passengers lazily reached for the jet bridge, but despite this, my nerves worked with a bang - that’s it, I’m the last of those left in our gate:
I’m heading to boarding:
Next is the telebridge. Usually, when you are the last one to board, you still meet the backs of passengers in front of you who have left, waiting to board due to delays, but not this time. I go through it from beginning to end in splendid isolation:
On board, flight
I go to board and assess how few passengers there are on this flight:
I pass by my fellow passenger and find a row where the window is more optimally located:
But as soon as I squeezed into this row, a steward came up to me and asked if my seats were here? I told him no. He responded by saying that this seat would be occupied by a passenger who had not yet boarded the plane. Therefore, it is necessary to free the row. Okay, but can I sit in the row forward, where there was also no one, I asked him? He answered that yes, it is possible. I sat down one row closer, about the 4th row from the end:
Then another passenger actually appeared. He was a young, fit Chinese man. He sat in the row back from me, but not by the window, but on the edge. As soon as he sat down, the flight attendant walked over to my row of seats and strapped the empty seat on the end opposite him. I realized what kind of passenger he was - a representative of the local equivalent of our FSB always flies on every flight of a Chinese airline. By the way, the aircraft commander later announced this: they say that in accordance with the laws of China, there is a marshal on board - a special person to ensure security.
From my seat I had this view:
Seats for the legs is quite enough:
Seat with a closed folding table:
With an open one:
In the back of the seat there is a safety instruction and a logbook:
Hurray, there is a night flight ahead and three seats in my row are empty:
What else can be noted from my surroundings? Slightly scratched belt buckle:
USB connector located below and between the seats:
The seat upholstery at the bottom was hanging with a chewed rag:
The panel above the head is as simple as three rubles:
The demonstration of the flight safety briefing has begun, which at Air China takes place through a cartoon panda grimacing on the folding screen:
Let's go to the starting point:
For some reason, they did not dim the lights in the cabin, neither while taxiing to the runway, nor even during takeoff. Because of this, it was difficult to shoot anything from the outside, as glare and reflections in the porthole got in the way.
Taking off, Kuala Lumpur was on my side, but due to the bright light on board, it was not possible to see, much less photograph, the city at night. In addition, a good half of the city was cut off from view by a sharp boundary of rain clouds:
After an hour of flight, drinks began to be served. I chose tomato juice:
After another 15 minutes they offered dinner (or breakfast?). The choice was omelette and chicken. I asked for an omelette and beer and sparkling water to go with it:
I open the packages of my wealth:
The omelette came with sausage and some kind of boiled herb . There was also yogurt (still breakfast?), and two plates. One with pieces of melon and watermelon, and the second I didn’t understand what. It tastes between carrots and beets. The consistency is a little softer than the mentioned vegetables. I then asked my fellow traveler what it was, but she also found it difficult to answer, even though she had tried more exotic things in her life than I had. There was also a croissant with jam. The omelette tasted not wow at all. The consistency is also not so great. When I put a piece in my mouth, I felt like I was chewing rubber. I don’t know what rating I should give to the in-flight food, but for me, it doesn’t even reach 4. In short: the Chinese are far from African, Russian and Middle Eastern airlines in this regard.
After a late dinner, the lights in the cabin were dimmed. Why didn't they do this when we took off..:
Before taking a horizontal position, to complete the picture, it was necessary to visit the toilet:
Although it was cramped there, it was very clean. This is understandable - there is no one in particular to go there on this flight. On the next leg, about which I did not plan to write a review, Air China also flew, but on a wide-body side. And on this flight I met the largest on-board toilet in my life. Assess the breadth of space:
Having returned to the place, I went to bed and slept for 4 hours. An hour before landing, the lights were turned on and the few passengers were awakened. I looked out the window - there was a flood of lights, it’s not over Russia to fly somewhere over the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. Some large Chinese city floated below us. I was too lazy to check the app in my sleep to find out its name:
They didn’t offer me a second meal. Even have a drink. And I didn’t really want to. It began to get light, and when they set it became quite light, although the sun had not yet risen:
The center of Beijing was on my side, as I understood from the visible skyscrapers, but he was far enough away to see the details.
The moment of landing can be seen in a short video:
Mileage:
Taxiing to gate:
We taxi to our gate and stand next to the A-330 Cathay Pacific:
For most of those few passengers who flew this flight, Beijing was most likely the final destination, since they put on warm clothes. We leave the cabin:
After the flight, Beijing airport.
We didn’t have warm clothes, since Beijing was only a transfer airport. Entering the telebridge I felt a sharp cold. The temperature at these hours was about zero degrees:
In the annex we rise to a higher level and follow the corridor:
A look back at our board:
We go further along the gallery:
We enter some room where we had to decide on the hotel that Air China provided us:
Everywhere queue, no one to ask. There are queues at some booths where you can’t even get close to just asking. Still, I saw airport employees who were attacked by passengers who were just as helpless in the local realities as I was. After showing us a printout of our hotel reservation, we were directed to another line. Here it is, its end is visible:
After spending half an hour in it and poking the next employee with a printout, we were told that this was not the place for us. They showed us a new direction, explaining in detail how and where to go. We needed to obtain a temporary exit permit. We came to a new booth with a queue:
I was immediately confused by the sign that there is an exit for those who have transit for more than 24 hours. But there was nothing to do, we had to stand, since we were already in a state of a vicious circle. After standing here for another 40 minutes, the woman in the booth gave us a turnaround, since there were already less than 5 hours left before our next flight.
I have never seen such a weak, and what is it weak, disgusting organization for providing transfer passengers, anywhere before. The attitude of the staff is indifferent and even sometimes contemptuous. And it doesn’t matter what passport you have. There were Czechs, Russians, and representatives of some Muslim countries standing in line, and none of them were treated properly. So that I can still fly with Chinese airlines and through China? No way. It is better to overpay and fly with Gulf airlines or Ethiopians.
The transfer time was spent at the airport, where there are no normal cafes with adequate prices. There weren't even any snack bars. Only small kiosks where, in order to warm up, I paid 75 yuan for two coffees, which, taking into account the commission of my bank, translated into more than a thousand rubles:
After coffee, my bad mood lifted somewhat. It has also become warmer in the terminal. The time remaining until the next flight passed in sad contemplation of the aircraft:
Beijing Capital Airport will be discussed in more detail in another review, but I am concluding this review. In conclusion, a screenshot of my flight from 24Flightradar.com:
Thanks to everyone who completed it, and good luck to all of us!
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