About 6 months or so ago, I managed to score a really sweet deal on Air Asia’s promotion to KL. I paid $300 inclusive of seat booking, meals, luggage upgrade and taxes. I figured, I’ll buy first and figure out the rest later. Even if i had to forgo the ticket, it still would have been worth the risk buying it in the first place.
The only thing was, it was a budget airline. What should I expect? shitty service? cramped leg room? worse still, engine failure, higher rate of turbulence, tyres bursting upon takeoff/landing??? Ok, I know that’s just being silly, but fear of the unknown is still fear, my friends.
Well, now that I have survived my flight (there and back), I can finally take a deep breath and say that it turned out to be quite a decent flight.
It’s interesting that for every positive point I have about Air Asia, there’s always a negative.
*Please note, my flights were as follows: Depart Melb – red eye flight, Depart KL – day flight.
Food
The food was surprisingly quite edible. The only problem was, I was offered Nasi Lemak on both my flights, 3 times in total. I had prebooked my meals for one western (on the way there), and asian (back) but yet, I was offered the same thing. I thought, that’s ok, it was a 7 day lapse, I can eat Nasi Lemak again. BUT because my flight back was a day flight, I had to get two meals. My prebooked dinner only covered 1 meal. So I asked them what other dishes they had (according to their menu, they had at least 4-5 other selections). And you know what they told me?? they only had the nasi lemak or spaghetti and meatballs. Now, have any of you ever eaten those canned spaghetti before? Well, this tasted worse. It was dry, the spaghetti was overdone and the meatballs…..the minute I bit into it, I realised they were Asian meatballs…the ones you get from the frozen department and Asian grocery stores – the chewy ones.
Summary: To KL – good, To Melb – BAD
Result: FAIL – Although the food was decent, there is still no excuse for them to offer the same thing to me THREE times. And the selection was appalling. Don’t get me started again on the spaghetti and ‘meatballs’.
Seats
First of all, I have to say the actual seat itself isn’t too bad. It kinda reminds me of the virgin airline seats (domestic flight).
On my return flight, as I tried to recline my chair, it dawned on me that the plane I was in had a different configuration than the one I was on before. No matter how hard I pushed that tiny little button while trying not to look like a crazy person hitting my body against the chair, the darn thing just refused to move an inch. I actually looked around a couple of times to see if anyone else had any success but from the look of the identical width between all the seats, I’m guessing nobody went very far either. The thing I don’t get is, why did they have the button there? WHY do they even bother having it if it doesn’t work?
Anyway, the good thing was that I decided to take the risk of pre-booking my seats. The minute I stepped into the plane, it hit me how tiny the spaces were between the front and back seats. Now, I’m tiny to begin with. Can you imagine a 6 ft tall guy trying to squeeze into that tiny lil space?? Well, I saw it and it ain’t a pretty sight. The oddest thing, however, is that other than myself, nobody else seemed to have pre booked their seats. The row was completely empty!
Now, when I managed to find the seat I wanted, I thought, “oh thank gawd nobody had taken it”. How is it that nobody else had the sense to pre book them either? The one negative feedback I always heard about Air Asia was how tiny the seats are!
For the life of me, I have no idea why nobody pre booked their seats. It’s an additional $25 (i think) to pre book a seat – peanuts if you ask me for an 8 hour journey. In addition, because my seat was next to the window and the exit door, I had the luxury of a makeshift ottoman (the exit door has a thing that juts out at the bottom) to put my feet up on. Because my flight to KL was a red eye, I snuggled my neck pillow between my chair and the next and promptly went to sleep. Halfway through, I woke up to find someone sitting next to me and almost had a heart attack.
Anyway, long story short, I would highly recommend booking seats on Air Asia if you ever travel on it. Some people tried to do the dodgy by moving seats once the plane is in the air but the stewards/ess will check your boarding pass and promptly usher you back to your original seat. You may get away on the red eye flights as most people just fall asleep so there are less activity in the aircraft – meaning so do the stewards/ess.
The one bad thing about the exit seats however, is the high traffic in and out of the toilets. It was non stop and highly annoying when all you want to do is try to sleep. There is hardly any privacy either because when people are waiting outside toilets, and you’re the only person sitting in front, you’re the entertainment unit which Air Asia don’t supply (unless you paid $10 for it).
Summary: To KL – good (mainly coz I was on night flight), To Melb – mediocre
Result: PASS – only if you pre book a red eye flight and lucky enough to get a plane that has seats that recline.
Service (on and off ground)
Service is what you would expect from a budget airline. The line was long, the staff was few. I managed to check in online hours before I was due to arrive at the airport. Upon finding the web check in counter (which took a while because of the poorly described signage), I thought, oh, this is good, only 10 people or so before me compared to 30-40 in the normal queue. Ah, how deceiving it all was. They had obviously stuck the more efficient staff behind those counters and left the half asleep one behind mine! Fine, fine, in all fairness, there was a slight confusion with a few people’s ticket and that did take a while. All in all, check in from Melb really was a breeze compared to KL.
When I got to KL, I had done the same thing, check in online before hand. Unfortunately, the sms that was supposed to be sent to my mobile never arrived. I went to a counter and told them whether they could help me out based on my reservation booking. The guy told me to go to counter 27 and they will check me in. So I thought, oh ok, that was straightforward enough. I walk up to counter 27 and realised the entire place was empty. jack ass.
In the end, I found some on ground staff and they actually told me there is no web check in for Australian flights. wtf. The logic which always seem to fail Malaysians is: why do you have options online or tell people of things that does not exist?? Seriously, I just don’t get it.
Long story short, after lining up for a good hour, I finally got my boarding pass and went on my way.
I don’t have much to say about the stewards/ess on the plane. So I guess that means they did a good job..lol
Summary: always expect the worse so you don’t get stuck in a bad situation
Result: PASS – I think the service itself wasn’t too bad – but they should definitely have better signage and information for travelers.
Flight
Surprisingly, both flights were the smoothest I have ever been to between Australia and Malaysia. I think it is largely to do with the fact that I have never flown during this time of the year before. I don’t think it is fair to give Air Asia credit for the weather conditions but I will say that the flight was comfortable enough.
Result: PASS
Overall
I would definitely fly Air Asia again at least another time to get a better sense of the airline. Who knows, I may have just been lucky this time round not to have encountered anything too drastic. However, weighing everything out, at the end of the day, I would still choose a bigger airline like SIA and MAS if the price difference is comparable. After all, the seat spaces are slightly bigger, the food and service slightly better and I can always get a partial refund (or change my dates) in the end.
Hey, we were told to stay away from the rally which covered a huge part of the city area so what else could I do, right?