Carelessly MAS-ed

The next time you ask a cabin crew to handle your hand-carried suit, hoping that it is gonna be safe & sound in the wardrobe some 10,000 ft. above land & sea, & you simultaneously freak out that you're ever gonna leave it behind again, take matters into your own hands. Do not trust the cabin crew, not even the hired airlines.

A close friend of mine, let's call him Mr. K, has just bought a Paul Smith suit specially for a wedding. He was in fact, the best man. The wedding was sometime in Dec. in Bali. Oh, did I mention that the suit was an extravagance? It was approx. RM4k.

So, upon his return, he did precisely what I mentioned in the 1st paragraph, except that it was actually the 1st time he's ever forgotten to recollect his suit from the wardrobe. He landed bout 5ish in the evening. But the missing suit only struck him later when he reached home. He was beyond worried, maybe just a few inches below the devastated point.

Mr. K called to KLIA. He was directed & transferred to a few departments (Note: this is very normal in Malaysia, nobody really knows what exactly everyone does). K was obviously fed-up & fuckstrated. Only sometime later, he was informed that the airlines' system was down, hence, causing it impossible to locate the plane where he left his suit in.

Absurd & stupid? Yes, I know. How could an international airport fall into any system failure? Don't they have any technical appliances back-ups? What if there were a hijack? What if there are more what-ifs? There was really nothing K could do, but to wait until the system recovers. About 10ish on the same night, the Lost & Found at the KLIA finally called. Informing K that they have relocated the plane, & that the suit was with them. Phew~~ This is a lesson to learn, but you can be rest assured that this unfortunate event has geographically mapped a dark spot in his mind.

So, let me analyse this. The KLIA experienced a system failure that lasted for some 5 hours if I have my facts correctly. If a sucidal terrorist attack were to unleash, & it takes only 30 minutes for a group of 'skillful' armed men to fly the plane, & crash the Petronas Twin Towers; 10 twin towers are already gone by now! & how many lives were sacrified? I really can't do the sum...

Then, I decided to e-mail KLIA asking bout the cause & effect of this system failure. But to my dismay, I've never gotten any reply from its PR.

In the world filled with the uncontrollable, let's take comfort in knowing that the chances of us being hijacked is almost impossible. But in the endless battle against the terrorist, is the Kuala Lumpur International Airport allowed to have a system breakdown at all? Well, you tell me... This is surely something to brag about...