Malindo Air Review (Kota Kinabalu to KL)

Decided to try out Malindo air after reading a lot of great value it was providing on their website. 

• Extra legroom 32” seat pitch
• In-flight Entertainment
• Included baggage allowance (20kg)
• Included refreshments

Booking Experience

I initially had a problem with my booking, where my payment did not go through and when I tried to rebook, it warned me that I could have a potential duplicate booking. Settled everything with customer service even though I had to wait for one day to rebook, lucky the prices were still the same. 

The Malindo Air website is still a little primitive in functionality and I'd assume that this would improve in time to come. Web checkin at the time of writing was not functioning. 

Boarding Experience

Malindo Air seems to use a slightly different way of boarding its passengers. They setup 3 queues. The initial queue is for older people and people with children. There is another queue for business class passengers and another queue for passengers sitting in the back seats.. if I'm not mistaken rows 20 and above. There was a little confusion as some passengers would queue up at the business class queue to get in. Some signs would have been helpful.

Anyway, I like the idea as it spreads the queue out instead of having a single long queue. 

Seat space

Malindo's website says it has a 32" seat pitch. I'm not really sure what that means, but the assumption is that bigger is better hehe.. Comparing with the other airlines flying to/from KK/KL, Malindo has the largest seat pitch.

Seat pitch comparison

My previous flight was on Malaysia Airlines flying into KK. I can tell you that the legroom on Malindo was definitely bigger than the standard economy seats on Malaysia Airlines. Airasia looks like a sardine can compared to Malindo! plenty of space here! I absolutely love it, great for people with long legs. 

Feels just like airasia's hotseat.. so spacious..

I tried to measure it using a spritzer bottle that I carried on board. I think its about 1.5 spritzer bottles in legroom space. 

About 1.5 spritzer bottles of legroom

Entertainment system

One thing that interested me about Malindo Air was the provision of an entertainment system even for a 2.5 hour flight. 

Entertainment Unit

It has built in USB (with nice blue illumination) on every seat for charging portable devices.

Headphone jack, something unknown connector and USB plug

Woohoo.. able to charge my handphone on the plane.. Didn't need to bring my heavy powerbank. 

It charges!

Movies for longer flights. Watched a full show of The Croods. 

Movies

TV shows for short flights. Manage to watch a full round of Just for laughs. 

TV Shows

The screens were touch screens which made me wonder if they attached tablets to the back of the seats hehe..

Ok now, here's the catch. Headphones are not provided but they are sold on board for RM15 per set. So remember to bring your own headphones the next time you take Malindo Air. 

Food

The light refreshments was a bottle of water and a piece of fruit cake. 

Mineral water and fruitcake

If your still hungry after that, its possible to pay RM12 for a main meal or around RM5-6 for snacks. 

The Menu

Snacks and Drinks

Main Meals

I didn't order any meals on board, as I wasn't very hungry. As the cart moved closer to my seat, I was very tempted to buy one, it smelt pretty good. 

Safety

My only gripe is the lack of safety concerns by the stewardess. During landing, all passengers were required to straighten their seats. The person in front of me had theirs inclined almost all the way down. One stewardess came to do the check, looking left and right, strange that they would miss this. Worse yet was there were another two stewardess later who came to do the checks and didn't even notice it. 

Summary

Besides the safety concerns, I'd say that Malindo Air is definitely worth the money if you get the discounted prices. It can get fairly expensive if its selling at its normal price. 

Malaysia Airlines had better get their act together, if Malindo Air keeps this up, there wouldn't be any reason to take Malaysia Airlines anymore. Larger legroom, in-flight entertainment