PUTRAJAYA: The Government and AirAsia officials took the risk to mount a flight to transport Malaysians from Saudi Arabia on Thursday despite not having the clearance to land in Cairo or Jeddah.
Since Wednesday, AirAsia’s flight AK 9800 was filled with foodstuff, along with passengers among whom were AirAsia deputy group chief executive Datuk Kamarudin Meranun, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Jamil Khir Baharom and Tabung Haji chief executive Datuk Ismee Ismail.
However, the A340 aircraft couldn’t take off from the Low-Cost Carrier Terminal as it had no clearance to land either in Cairo or Jeddah because the airline had no landing rights.
However, they decided to take off at 7am the next day and while in mid-air, the pilot was told that he could land in Cairo although the entourage had planned to land in Jeddah to establish ground support.
“We decided to go for it although we had wanted to make it to Jeddah which was to be our hub in this airlift operation. But our minds were on the thousands of Malaysian students stuck in Egypt,” Kamarudin said yesterday.
They packed over 320 Malaysian students into the aircraft and made the two-hour long flight to Jeddah.
The crews’ problems didn’t end there. They found that their documents were not in order.
Kamaruddin then called his partner AirAsia CEO Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes and also Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor to explain their predicament.
“Datin Seri realised what was needed. She made some calls and the visas and landing permits were quickly approved,” he said.
AirAsia also deployed two more planes for the operation.
“The A320 will be the workhorse and will do up to seven flights daily between Cairo or Alexandria and Jeddah, while the A340 and the A330 with its bigger capacity will do up to two flights daily.
“This means AirAsia will mount almost 10 shuttle flights daily to airlift Malaysians out of Egypt,” Kamarudin said.
read more @ the star:
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/2/6/nation/8011650&sec=nation
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