Air Asia begin to challenge the big guns for cheap long-haul travel... (AirAsia)

Member Name: Pablo_Sevilla

Product:	AirAsia
Date:	01/06/09 (32 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very cheap, now fly from London to Kuala Lumpur, easy to book online, always on time...

Disadvantages: Poor call centre helpline

Air Asia have been around for some time now, but are now expanding rapidly, and now with DIRECT flights to Kuala Lumpur from London Stansted, they are really making a name for themselves and challenging the big airlines for cheap flights to South-East Asia from Europe.

And boy is it cheap!

I have flown many times within South-East Asia with Air Asia as there prices are now often than cheaper than taking trains or buses overland into countries within the region. For example, they currently offer single one way flights from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok for £8! This is more than half the price a 24 hour sleeper train would cost on the same route. So in many cases you are saving both time and money.

Recently however me and my girlfriend took advantage of promotional offers on the website and booked return tickets to Kuala Lumpur from London Stansted for £280 return including taxes!

Now unfortunately AirAsia do have charges for checked in baggage, so 15kg will cost you £5, 20kg £11 and so forth on a sliding scale, and you have to pay for inflight meals, which is another £7 each way, but these are of course optional fees. You do NOT have to pay for them, it is still your choice. And besides, even with these fees, our flights to Kuala Lumpur only costed a total of about £320 each, for a direct flight with no stopovers. That is ridiculously cheap and the fact Airasia doesn't have any inflight entertainment doesn't bother me. I'd rather fly DIRECT for this ludicriously cheap fare (£160 each way) and get it all over with in 12 hours rather than having a stopover in a place like Dubai (Emirates) or Doha (Qatar) where i'll waste even more money buying food and drink killing time transiting!

I guess I will write an updated report after this trip to Kuala Lumpur, but I have survived far worse journeys than 12 hours on a plane with no entertainment (I will bring my Nintendo DS, books, and plenty to do) and for me the price far outweighs any negative points about AirAsia such as the fee for inflight meals (which are actually quite nice) and checked in baggage.

Aslong as they don't follow RyanAir's unethical trading practices where they will begin charging overweight people addition fees to fly and a compulsory online check in fee, I think they have even more success to come (especially with more routes to Europe planned).

As for the flights themselves, I have always found the attendants to be very friendly and helpful, they all spoke good English as well as there native languages. Not the same can be said for other budget airlines like RyanAir, where staff are totally incompetent to the point I often fear for my safety on flights!

Making bookings with the site is fairly straight forward and the site in general has seemed to improve over the past few months as they continue to expand. I haven't encountered any server problems and booking the recent flight (with Visa credit card) was simple and efficient. It took about 5 minutes and I recieved confirmation immediately after via email.
The FAQ section is also much more helpful than it used to be.

The AA call centres are notoriously bad and I had trouble getting through initially. This is one area AirAsia need to improve on still. When I did get through to someone they were obviously a non-native English language speaker (despite this being a UK helpline) who had difficulty understanding me and vice versa! Ultimately it wasn't very helpful and I just reffered back to the online FAQ and found my answer there.

I have never encountered any delays with AirAsia myself and I have flew to various destinations with them to places like Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Malaysia and Indonesia. They were always on time in every case from what I recall.

Most AirAsia airports are in reasonable locations (Standsted is a notable exception).

Overall AirAsia will have even more success as long as they resist the temptation to follow RyanAir's unethical and misleading business practices and compulsory fees that end up making your flight much more expensive than you are led to believe.
Despite the existence of surcharges for food and checked in baggage and a poor call centre helpline, I still highly recommend AirAsia to anyone traveling around Asia as the planes are safe, clean, have reasonable leg room and the flights are on time with friendly air stewards...
And then there's the small matter of the price, which is usually the cheapest you'll find!

Happy travels!

Summary: Air Asia: A budget airline who are doing everything right for a change! RyanAir are you listening!?