PETALING JAYA: After enduring repeated delays of his AirAsia flight from Kota Kinabalu to Sandakan, MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong (pic) took the low-cost carrier to task and called for transparency.

“Something very unfortunate happened. I was initially supposed to fly at 3.10pm on Saturday before receiving a notice that it would be delayed to 5.55pm the same day, then to 11.30pm.

“Another notice came, saying that the flight would be delayed to 2.10am on Sunday,” the Ayer Hitam MP recounted in a video uploaded to his Facebook page yesterday.

He added that he later received yet another notice about the changed flight time to 1am on Sunday instead, but when he arrived at the counter, the former transport minister was told that the flight was grounded and its status would only be known at 7am that day.

“Why didn’t you inform us earlier? I even rented a room nearby for some rest owing to the delay and had already checked out as well.

“Tell me what is going on so I can plan my route to Sandakan, instead of letting us just wait around here like fools,” said a visibly upset Dr Wee.

He also stressed the need to be transparent over the flight’s status.

“If the flight is grounded, just tell us. We will find other ways to travel, but don’t just keep mum.

“Are there no crisis management measures in place? Don’t burden us,” he said.

Due to the delay, Dr Wee said he was forced to cancel his programme in Sandakan scheduled for 7pm on Saturday.

In a series of pictures uploaded with the post, he said the initial flight was further delayed to 1.45pm on Sunday, which led to him paying for another flight departing from Kota Kinabalu to Sandakan at 7.10am.

He finally arrived in Sandakan at about 9.45am on Sunday and made it to the Sabah Barisan Nasional convention.

AirAsia was among many companies in various sectors hit by a global tech outage on Friday. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has since deployed a fix for the glitch tied to a software update.

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2024/07/22/airasia-taken-to-task-for-poor-crisis-management