Review: Malaysia Airlines Boeing 737-800 – Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok

This is review details my experience on a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 737-800 in November 2023. You can read my much more detailed full trip report of this flight by clicking here.

About the Airline

Expectations

Pre-Flight Experience

Despite being a reward flight that I had booked via the British Airways app, I faced no issues when loading up my booking on Malaysia Airlines’ website. This gave me the option to add optional extras that included reserving a seat, adding additional luggage and lounge access in Kuala Lumpur. However, I passed on these and as my flight approached, I was delighted to find that I could check-in online and was able to pre-select a seat for free and receive my boarding pass without issue.

Costs

Airport Experience

Being the home of Malaysia Airlines, unsurprisingly KLIA1 is fully decked out in the hometown airline’s branding and plenty of check-in desks and self check-in machines are offered throughout. However, seeing as I had checked-in online and lacked any hold luggage, I had no reason to stop off at any of these. Following some time spent in the airport’s viewing area, I made my way to the airside portion of the terminal.

After an hour or so spent wandering around, I received an email from Malaysia Airlines which revealed that my flight to Bangkok had been pushed back to 1700. Eventually, with fifty minutes to go until departure, I made my way to the gate. Interestingly at KLIA1, passengers do not pass through a security checkpoint upon entering the airside area. Instead, each gate has its own small security checkpoint! Following a short queue, I entered this and made my way downstairs to the waiting area. At the gate, a complement of crew could be seen, as could many of the passengers, however, one key piece of the puzzle was missing – the aircraft! A little after entering the waiting area, the departure screens updated to show that the flight would now depart at 1805. Granted, this was not the best of news and I wished that I had spent longer in the terminal, not least because the waiting area was home to just a single toilet that was in a blocked a filthy condition!

Eventually, the aircraft appeared and boarding commenced less than thirty minutes after this had come to a halt following its journey from Bali. This was a fairly ordered and quick affair, and I found the gate staff to be pleasant, polite and friendly.

Seat and Cabin

Onboard, the aircraft featured the latest of Malaysia Airlines Boeing 737 cabin. In Economy, this featured 144 ironing board-like modern slimline seats, and at first glance were more akin to something you would expect to see onboard a low cost carrier. Despite this, I found these to be stylish and smart in their appearance. Each seat featured a pleather cover consisting of blue and grey strips, with a strip that featured a traditional pattern separating the blue from the grey portions of the seat. Each of these also came topped with a disposable fabric antimacassar that featured Malaysia Airlines’ famous motif. Unlike the older Boeing 737 seats, these lacked a personal inflight entertainment screen, with a device holder sitting in its place. However, these did feature a USB port that I found to work well during the flight.

In terms of comfort, despite their thin appearance, I found these seats to be perfectly adequate for a flight of several hours and offered a decent amount of legroom too. Meanwhile, whilst the aircraft had only spent a minimal time on the ground, the aircraft appeared to be spotlessly clean and in tip-top condition with minimal signs of wear and tear.

Lavatories

Recognising that I may be trapped in the window seat for the duration of the flight, once I had stored my backpack I opted to make a trip to one of the two rear lavatories. Once inside, I found this to be clean and tidy, and stocked with all the basics that you would hope to find inside an aircraft lavatory. With this therefore leaving me with no complaints whatsoever.

Inflight Entertainment

Whilst there were no inflight entertainment screens, a wifi-based streaming service was offered. That evening, I had no issues with connecting to the onboard wifi network or navigating my way around the MH Studio inflight entertainment portal. In terms of content, whilst this was not as expansive as systems on say the ME3, this was still offered a very good array of content.

Despite not having any real intention of watching anything on the system, I did play around with this and found that content was quick to load and broadcast in high quality. However, each item did commence with a series of advertisements. This portal also allowed passengers to browse a range of information related to their flight, look through the SkySnack BoB menu (which I assume could be used for those wishing to purchase snacks in between meal services on longer services). Whilst the Temptations onboard shopping catalogue and the airline’s Going Places magazine could also be read via the portal. Overall, this seemed to be a good system although I couldn’t help that despite the wide range of destinations that Malaysia Airlines serves, the system was only available in Malay and English. Meanwhile, at the time of my flight, the wifi lacked any option to connect to the internet, although the airline does intend to roll out their MHconnect service to their Boeing 737 fleet in due course.

Turning to the Going Places magazine, this was a fairly professional publication with a wealth of interesting articles – most of which related to things to do, see and eat at the airline’s destinations, and did not seem to feature quite as many advertisements as the inflight magazines of many other carriers.

Catering

A short time after departure, the purser announced that those in Economy would be served with a light meal. Once at my row, one of the flight attendants took the time to describe both options in detail, and I was offered the choice of pan-fried fish or Hyderabadi chicken biryani. Opting for the latter, this was handed over to me at which point in became clear that the purser had been lying when they described the inflight service as consisting of a ‘light’ meal!

Examining the tray, this contained the main dish, along with a bread roll with butter, a slice of marble cake, a selection of melon chunks, a Malaysia Airlines branded packet of salted peanuts and a 250ml bottle of still water. Meanwhile, eating utensils came in the form of sturdy plastic cutlery that featured the carrier’s motif. All-in-all, I found the meal to be absolutely delicious and was of fantastic quantity given the relatively short length of the flight.

Once the trays had been collected, a round of drinks was undertaken. With Malaysia Airlines being a dry airline, these consisted of a selection of juices, water, Coca-Cola and Sprite. This was later followed by a round of tea and coffee. Finally, a round of soft drinks was made slightly later on in the flight, around ten minutes prior to our arrival.

Crew

I have to say, I was left very impressed by the crew. They seemed to be professional, polite, friendly and very attentive at all times throughout the flight, leaving me with nothing to complain about.

Summary

Ignoring the delay and the fact that passengers were held in the gate area for an unnecessarily long amount of time before boarding, I was very impressed by my first Malaysia Airlines experience and would love to fly with them again at some point.