Captain Hamdan’s Nerve-Racking Experience Transporting Malaysia’s First Batch Of Covid-19 Vaccines

Captain Hamdan Che Ismail was responsible for navigating flight MH604 into transporting the first batch of Covid-19 vaccines to Malaysia from Singapore, in what felt like the tensest hour for the captain’s 29-year career in the aviation industry.

Not only did Hamdan had to fly a plane, but the captain also had to make sure the right temperature was maintained in the airplane at all times. This is to ensure that the efficacy of the vaccines stored at -70 degrees Celsius was not affected in any harm’s way.

The Malaysia Airlines flight operations director also acknowledged how anxious he was about the task he was given. Hamdan thought about how worried he was that the Covid-19 vaccine onboard the plane could get spoilt. Fortunately, the vaccine has already reached Malaysia and the captain felt relieved.

About 312,390 doses of Covid-19 vaccine were carried onboard flight MH604 and had landed safely at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) around 10am (10.07am more precisely).

To make things more patriotic, a Jalur Gemilang livery was decorated on an Airbus 330-330 aircraft, sure to make Malaysians proud. MAB Kargo Sdn Bhd (MASKargo) was operating the Passenger-to-Cargo (P2C) flight.

Hamdan also stated there were five crew members onboard the flight including himself. This included an assistant pilot, an officer from MASKargo, an engineer, and two cabin crews. The pilot also stated that they left for Singapore at 6am and arrived one hour later.

Hamdan mentioned how it took roughly two hours to transfer the vaccines onto the airplane before it was okay to take off again around 9am.

When he arrived at KLIA, he “felt jubilant, overwhelmed and excited” in bringing the Covid-19 vaccines to Malaysia without any failure.