ANN/THE STRAITS TIMES – Passengers flying from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore on Wednesday night were left stranded for hours at the airport after the plane experienced technical issues.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) flight SQ125 was scheduled to leave the Malaysian capital at 8.40pm and arrive in Singapore at 9.50pm, with 159 passengers and 13 crew on board.
An SIA spokesman told The Straits Times that the Airbus A350 encountered a technical issue while the aircraft was still on the ground.
He added that the aircraft returned to the bay and all passengers and crew disembarked normally.
A decision was made for all affected passengers to get on a relief flight as engineers on the ground required more time to fix the technical issue, said the SIA spokesman.
However, the relief flight was subsequently cancelled owing to regulatory reasons, which were not revealed.
The SIA spokesman added: “SIA sincerely apologises for the inconvenience this flight cancellation has caused.”
He added that travellers were provided with meal vouchers. Arrangements were also made for the passengers to be put on other flights from KL to Singapore on Thursday.
In a Facebook post on Friday, a woman said that her tour group was supposed to be on that flight to Singapore, where they would take another flight to London. At 8.45pm, 15 minutes after the flight was meant to depart, the captain made an announcement that there was a technical error.
She said that at 11pm, the flight was cancelled. The relief flight was rescheduled to depart at 2.30am, but it was postponed for two hours before being cancelled.
In her post, she said: “From 11.30pm to 4.50am, we were not given water to drink, and we were clueless as to what was happening to our flight.” She added that they were stranded and not offered hotel accommodations.
“We also missed our Singapore to London flight, which was supposed to be at 11.45pm,” she said.
On social media site Reddit, another passenger on the flight said that boarding began at 7.40pm, and he was stuck on the plane till 10.30pm. All passengers were then told to disembark from the plane.
He added that he was told that an alternative flight would arrive at 3.10am but it was delayed till 4.30am, before it was finally cancelled.
“Everything is chaos, no duty manager in sight,” said the passenger, adding that all passengers were given were Starbucks vouchers.
