SEPANG: Hundreds of passengers left stranded at the various airports by a flu epidemic among AirAsia pilots were left seething with anger.
Checks at klia2 yesterday found passengers visibly upset and angry as they were not informed of the cause of the delay and forced to wait for hours without explanation.
The heavy passenger flow at klia2 forced some to have to sit on the floors, enraging them even more.
Fatimah Bujing, of Petrajaya in Sarawak, was one such irate passenger. She had flown to Kuala Lumpur over the weekend for her son’s convocation and was due to fly back to Kuching on a 5pm flight.
However, she was not told of the delay until she arrived at klia2 at 2pm. She was later informed that the flight would take off at 7.45pm
“I wish they (the airline) had called me earlier to inform me of the delay. Now my whole family is stranded here without a clue about what is going on,” said the 52-year-old, adding that the AirAsia staff did not offer her adequate explanation.
She said her family and her were forced to sit on the floor and this, she said, was a problem for her as she suffers from bad knees.
Nor Fadhilah Che Hashim, meanwhile, was fuming over the fact that her mother’s flight to klia2 was delayed by five hours.
She said her mother was supposed to have arrived at 11am, but called to say that her flight from Kelantan had been delayed, though she was not told when it would take place.
Nor Fadhilah said she contacted AirAsia for an explanation but none gave her any information or came down to the ground to settle the chaos at the airport. Some passengers also missed their flights due to long queues at baggage check-ins caused by flight delays.
“My family and I missed our flight to Kota Kinabalu because our baggage was not checked-in on time,” said 32-year-old housewife Shannen Lee.
She said AirAsia staff should have opened up special counters for passengers whose flights were delayed.
“Instead, hundreds of us had to line up and it took a long time... it caused some to miss their flights.”
Many passengers took to social media to vent their frustrations.
Facebook user Noraizan Jamaludin, whose flight to Penang from klia2 was affected by the delays on Monday night, lambasted AirAsia, saying the airline management should review standard operating procedures for crisis management.
Her posting on Facebook stated that passengers, including children, were forced to sleep on the floor of the airport as they were informed by airline staffs that the hotels nearby were fully booked.
“AirAsia, how could you do this to your passengers? I would presume some information on operational problems would have been known earlier. If we were told before midnight, we could (have made) arrangements such as buying clothes and undergarments for the next day.”
Noraizan also highlighted the runaround passengers were put through. She said they were first instructed to wait at one departure gate, then made to walk to another departure gate, before heading back to the initial departure gate.
She claimed that nobody from AirAsia offered any explanation until about midnight, when an officer believed to be a manager announced that their flights were cancelled due to operational constraints.
The passengers were then directed to go back to the departure hall.
“By this time, tempers among the passengers were flaring.
“Guards were deployed to protect AirAsia staff.
“Soon, we found out that two other flights (to Alor Star and Kota Baru) suffered the same fate,” she said, adding that they were given new boarding passes at the counter in the departure hall.
At press time, her posting had been shared 170 times and received many likes and comments.
Twitter user @wafi_nha posted a screenshot of Noraizan’s Facebook post and tagged AirAsia group chief executive officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes’s twitter account for his comment on the matter, saying that it should not have happened.
An @askairasia account replied to him saying that the post had been forwarded to the relevant department for investigation and for an explanation about the matter.