Came back myself on AK876 last week on a visa run from Kuala Lumpur. An epic journey. At 1430 they announce delay due operational reasons to 1730. At 1730 call everyone to the Gate and we think we are leaving...but no, it's to give us a BigMac or McChicken sandwich! and a bottle of water and say they don't know how much longer the delay will be. 1800 they announce delay due to late arrival of inbound aircraft and it's due 1830 and we should leave 1855. We get airborne 1930. Fly perfectly smoothly for about 1/2 an hour but strangely the seatbelt fasten sign stays on and the cabin staff remain seated...no announcement of any sort.
Then we hear the undercarriage being lowered, then the Captain comes on and tells the cabin staff to be seated for landing!! Still no announcement from stewardess or the Captain...we land and looking out the window clearly we have not landed at Phuket!...we're taxiing in and at last the stewardess comes on and says "Yes, we are back at Kuala Lumpur. The Captain will advise what is happening when we are on the stand."
We pull up...engines kept running...Captain comes out of flightdeck and takes the mike and stood in front of us....fair play to him....said "one of our company aircraft is down today in Phuket (to some this may have sounded like one had crashed, but he meant one had a technical problem) and the company thought there was an engineer there who could sign it back on after repair, but there wasn't and so we were ordered back to pick one up!" As he says those last few words the door opens and in walks the engineer to cheers and clapping. 15 minutes later we taxi out again and finally arrive in Phuket at 2015...only 5 hours late
Not all flights are like this but having been a steward myself for a few years I have to say the crew/passenger communication was pretty p$ss poor!!
Won't stop me using them though. Probably go to KL most months. 3400baht return including taxes is very reasonable.
HKT-KUL flight schedule is here
http://www.phuket-info.com/forums/ex...visa-runs.html