A Great Outcome?

Firefly flight from Subang aborts landing at Seletar Airport

I am a subscriber of Singapore Straits Times and a regular user of Firefly. When this headline came out in its on-line edition yesterday, I naturally took an interest and read it.

Apparently, because of bad weather, the pilots decided to play safe and divert the aircraft to land at Senai Airport. I understand the landing approach is from the southern Johor. It reminds me of Kai Tak when the plane is directly over Pasir Gudang. You could almost touch the roofs of the buildings there! 

I couldn’t help extending it to my chat groups, though not without a little comment: Thanks to our Anthony Loke…

Firefly used to fly from Subang Airport to Changi Airport until a couple of months ago, when Singapore decided to ask it to land at Seletar Airport instead. I welcome the move, since it is a point-to-point service. All hell broke loose when the Harapan came into power. Sovereignty became the primary concern. The management of Firefly, which was all ready to accept Singapore’s decision, found itself in a limbo. All its services to Singapore had to be suspended. The profit contribution from them came to a complete halt. (Firefly charges quite exorbitantly for these routes, especially the Subang-Singapore leg.) Since I stay in Saujana Resort, catching a flight from KLIA to-fro Singapore became a dreadful routine. Many a time it takes almost two hours just to reach home. To add insult to injury, many a time coupon taxis are also not available, even though I was happy to pay the premium fare.

Being a Malaysian, it is only incumbent that I should support our government’s decision. But in my mind, we were simply not very ready. Yes, we all know the Singapore government people can be a very kneah-su (afraid to lose) lot, but they certainly do their homework before they talk or act. At least two incidents instantly flashed through my mind when this sovereignty issue surfaced: (a) MH370; wasn’t it picked up by our radar before it went missing? (b) Someone was hit when a flight landed at Subang in the wee hours of one morning recently? Can we manage things well ourselves? We sure can, but our easy-going and somewhat complacent nature must go in these things.

So, when Firefly resumed its service to Singapore, albeit via Seletar now, I became one of its earliest customers, even though it only flew two flights a day. (I see that it has returned to full service now.) I now only need two hours, besides the flying time, to reach my Singapore destination from my Subang home. And people operating Subang must visit Seletar to see for themselves how they run the airport there.

When I found Hanna Yeoh singing high praises to Anthony Loke in her Facebook posting for the resumption of the service, I asked myself: Is she doing a Trump victory fun?

Most of our ministers are first timers; they are anxious to prove that they can deliver more than their predecessors. Some, and their political officers, are pretty bright – Tony Pua, Ong Kian Ming, Liew Chin Tong, Theresa Kok, Hannah Yeoh, and Yeo Bee Yin, just to name a few.   Few have serious political baggage, but by virtue of the fact they came from parties which hitherto have not been wholehearted regarded as mainstream, few have the knowledge and network to make them effective in a short span of exposure, despite their good work attitude. There is a huge pool of talents whom they can tap for ideas, knowledge and connections in the country; they should take the initiative to reach out. This huge pool is unlikely to offer themselves if they are not asked – for fear of associating themselves with DAP, which has unfortunately been viewed as anti-establishment before GE14. Now that it is a part of the government, it should rebrand itself somewhat.