I left Cyberjaya early in the morning to avoid the rush hour jam only to be greeted with a clear path all the way to the Malaysian Airlines Academy (MAA), except for a few crawls near toll booths.
Arrived nearly an hour earlier, where I was greeted by Salina at the guard's booth. After obtaining my pass and escorted to the parking bay, I took a light breakfast at the cafeteria while waiting for the rest of the invitees to arrive.
While waiting, I could notice MAS crew trainees walking about, looking their best, carrying themselves full of confidence. I envy them... a lot actually.
When everyone arrived, we led upstairs to a briefing room, we got ourselves up to speed with what they do there, what are the criteria that is needed and drilled in to the crew before they are fit to represent the MH idealism in the skies.
So, what are the qualifications you might ask. The list goes.
Minimum SPM: Pass in 4 subjects including English and Bahasa Malaysia
Mentally and physically fit
Good vision and not color blind (in case you wouldn't get to differentiate blood and grape juice)
Height: Men 165cm, Ladies 157cm
Fluent in oral and written English and Bahasa Malaysia
and one of the more important characteristic (if not most important), a pleasant personality
Have you what it takes?
First of all after the short briefing, we were brought to the grooming hall; and since first looks give the biggest impression, we were shown on how to look our very best at all times. Make up sifu Ms. Ka Won gave a quick masterclass make up session with a test subject from one of us bloggers - Elena.
Here is vanilla Elena (rhymes doesn't it?) before everything, we took it to make comparisons.
Ms. Ka Won starting her transformation on Elena into an MAS stewardess' look.
All those work on Elena looks daunting if you did not see the process with your own eyes.
Inclusive of hair set up, everything is done within 10 minutes flat! (to you girls out there that thinks leaving your bf waiting for an hour so you can look good now can think again, LOLz)
How can we miss out a camwhore session of the final product with the sifu herself?
Later, the bunch of jakuns aka us, were brought to the medic/first aid class where a class is already in session, teaching cabin crew-to-be on how to treat hypo and hyperglycemic patients; followed by CPR and defibrillator drills in reviving passed out passengers while in the air.
Linora and Min Li caught camwhoring while we were brought to a mock cabin of a B 747-400 where crew are trained in an environment as close as possible to the real aircraft that they will be servicing on. Nearly every single detail on the mock aircraft is made to match with the real ones flying in the air at this very moment.
All of us were took on a tour of the entire plane. To those who have not been to the upper deck and first class cabin of the 747 (me!), it was definitely an eye opener. Wider seats, larger leg space and space to walk around puts even the most luxurious sedan to shame - all with a premium price tag of course.
Remember our cabin crew for the day, Elena? She was forced to serve us bloggers who have a huge appetite for comfort and total relaxation! Muahhahaha...
The exclusivity of the first class cabin opened only to us!
But at the very end of the day, Yatz still prefers the cozyness of the economy class. Well, whatever makes you happy right? ;)
Look at this...
.. now compare it with this... WHAT A HUGE DIFFERENCE! Hahahaha...
After the session of camwhoring (and signing of the indemnity form - should anyone lose a limb or fried his hair) we were given a taste of what happens should any emergency occurs. The cabin you see below is rigged to a system of hydraulic pumps and suspensions, and moves about while you and the crew are strapped to your chairs inside. The system operator sounds the buzzer and trained crew members will run through their drill in evacuating everyone to safety via the inflatable slide.
Cabin crew threw the door open for emergency clearance of the cabin.
Everyone was successfully evacuated, they even have time to camwhore at the end of the slide.
Right after that, the crew (real ones) were 'pushed' into the water for their water drill. Their exercise was on threading water to safety and gather all the crew in a tight spot.
The reason for keeping the circle tight is so that body heat would not be lost as quick as floating individually. Nearly 90% of water fatalities are due to drowning and nearly half of those are attributed to the effects of immersion in cold water resulting in hypothermia.
Once an aircraft or any search and rescue vessel is detected, the group will span out and try to make them more visible by kicking up water.
Then they were trained on getting aboard a survival raft, which need to be done with extreme care. If done wrongly, the worse can that can happen is someone being trapped below the raft and drown.
Once aboard, those on top will need to assist those who are getting up without hurting them in the process.
Here, the crew is demonstrating on how to position the raft for a certain direction - instead of utilizing the entire crew, a 2-man team is sufficient in doing so, enabling rotation of teams to reduce fatigue. There are much to learned here, but our time of merely 3 hours is definitely insufficient.
So, who's up for a bird's eye view from high above where they go beyond expectations serve with the Malaysian Hospitality.
At the end of the day, a fellow blogger, Lex is surprised with a birthday cake courtesy of MAA.
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