IT was almost midnight on Wednesday, Sept 8,1997. A chartered Boeing 747 Malaysia Airline plane bearing flight number MH4802 took off from Subang International Airport. The then Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad (now Tun), was on board with a few ministers and a planeload of businessmen, government officials and reporters. I was one of them.
It was a 10-day trip to Cuba and three Latin American counties, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina. The stopover was in Madrid before we made a trip to Havana, Cuba.
