Peace be upon you all. Recently I made another trip to Kelantan and was away for 3 nights. I returned home on Thursday night. Today I want to start the storytelling...
The trip was started Monday afternoon 10th October 2016. My wife sent me to the Subang airport to take a flight to Kelantan from there.
It has been more than a decade since I took a flight from here. Seen here is the official name of the airport...
If I remember correctly the last time I took a flight from Subang was in 1999. I was then still a sports journalist at The New Straits Times. I was assigned to follow the Petronas-Sauber F1 team for an F1 racing car street demonstration in Penang. That was just a few days before the Malaysian F1 Grand Prix made its debut at the Sepang F1 Circuit.
We mingled with team members which included the then much younger Kimi Raikkonen. He was a rising star who became a world champion albeit with another team a few years later.
A year or two earlier if not mistaken, when I was assigned to the general desk I remembered covering a motor show and exhibition here.
I remembered test-riding a new Triumph (I think that was the brand) big motorbike on the tarmac. It was supposed to be within a certain bounds. But I don't know what came over me. I decided to shoot off into the runway and soon was chased by 3 or 4 airport security vehicles! :]
What I do remember much clearly was the day I returned to Malaysia after 4 years of study in London.
That was in 1995 and I returend late October or so via this airport.
After that, I can't remember which year, the Subang airport was closed as the new and much much bigger Kuala Lumpur International Airport or KLIA in Sepang took its place. Since then I took flights out from there.
The Subang airport was turned into a convention centre of sorts. Then it was reopened to allow certain flights to take off from there. This is more convenient for those residing around the city of Kuala Lumpur. For the record KLIA is situated much further to the south.