Curfews

We departed KK for K-L about 2 and a half hours later than planned, at about 1930 local. The aircraft had thrown a hissy fit the previous night and maintenance wasn't able to sort it out in time for an on time departure the next morning. Not a huge problem for me - I knew well beforehand and arrived suitably late as well.

Now the runway in KK closes every night at 0100 local for "upgrading work" (though honestly I have no idea what they're doing because it just gets bumpier) so we had a last possible departure time from KL of 2230 local and our ETA was 2155. 35 minutes to turn around is more than we need but things would have to be snappy.

And they weren't.

We were sat on the ground for just under an hour due to slow boarding and problematic paperwork of a passenger. As the ground staff did their thing my eye was on the clock: 2215 ... 2230 (cut off!) ... 2235 ... 2240 ... 2245 ... By the time we took off ETA at KK was 0120. Operations gave us the "go" to give it a try - they would contact the airport and beg for an extension - but the whole thing was a bit non-committal. I prepared the flight plan for Brunei just in case and the Captain threw economy out the window and cruised at M0.80 instead of the usual M0.76-78.

We were lucky, we landed at 0107 and the runway was still open. It did make the flight more exciting though, so exciting I caught another cold.

S.