First Time With AirAsia - Is it really that.. ?
One Timer February 23rd, 2007I’ve been hearing lots of belligerent comments about AirAsia ever since it’s gotten popular. After seeing their darn-low-price advertisements, my wife and I decided to give a try with it.
We bought via internet return tickets to Penang for the Chinese New Year. Getting the flight information online was fairly easy. Everything was just clicks of a mouse. However, I had slight difficulties during the payment.
After agreed to the ‘Terms and Conditions’ at AirAsia online reservation, I had chosen the Debit Payment method. It stated on the payment page that Debit Payment is better and faster to get the tickets compare to credit card payment.
So, I did just that. Login into my online bank, confirm the price and clicked ‘Confirm’. To my surprise, instead of confirming my payment and flight itinerary, it led to an unexpected page – blank white page.
Feeling unsecured with the payment result, I immediately call up AirAsia Hotline. After explaining, the person on the phone had asked whether I wrote down the booking number. I replied that I did not. Therefore, my I/C number was used instead for the verification.
Later, she said that my flight reservation has gone through correctly. I must now wait for the flight itinerary arrives at my email inbox. I never knew why I was redirected to a blank page after the payment had been made.
Ready for the flight
My wife and I woke up at 4.30AM on a day before Chinese New Year. Our flight is departing at 6.55AM. After confirmed booking with a taxi driver previous night, he came on time at 5 O’clock in the morning. The journey took up 45 minutes from Serdang to LCCT and the taxi driver charged us RM60 because of the after-mid-night shift.
We were little bit astonish to see lots of people at LCCT during very early of the morning, never really had expected that. We are planning to hand-carried our bags and none will go to the check-in baggage belt. This is much easier and hassle free since we do not actually need to queue for the x-ray scan our bags. I think most people had queue for scan even though they are hand-carried the bags and they didn’t know about it. This has made the queue an exceedingly long one.
After a distance walk, we reached at our aircraft entrance gate. AirAsia is rather superior at giving treatment to old folks and parents with children. Priority is given to them to board the plane first before any other people. However, even though AirAsia had asked people to queue before boarding, they did not provide a good queue lining. I saw quite number of people just simply cut the queue by going straight to the front and the management people just couldn’t be bothered to take action. Terrible!
Kewl AirBus
My wife and I had the opportunity to embark into a brand new AirBus plane. Because of the free seating concept, we chose to sit most back seats. It’d be easier to get off from the plane using the back exit when landed.
The seats are covered with leather-like wrap. And everything else looks just new and clean. They also put on music that isn’t as boring as other common air liners. The music is something like you heard on radio Top 40 Chart.
But one thing made me felt a little bit uneasy; the seat size. I personally think it’s too small. With my height, 180cm (5’ 10”) it is quite difficult to adjust myself to fit into the seat. I guess AirAsia really maximize the capacity of every each plane.
Journey to Penang from KL was estimated 50 minutes but our plane landed in Bayan Lepas exactly 40 minutes after departure. Leaving the aircraft and exiting the airport is relatively straightforward, just walk all the way.
Return Trip – going back with Aerobus instead SkyBus
Our going back to KL flight was the last flight of the day. It was 10.45PM departure and arrival at 11.30PM. My wife and I decided that we take bus home from LCCT and request the driver to give a quick stop at Sg. Besi toll booth given that our house is less than 1 kilometer away from the Toll Plaza.
I asked SkyBus whether can they drop passengers in middle of the way, but they said that was not possible since they are providing express to KL Sentral. Fair enough. So, I inquired Aerobus – a different company providing bus services just like SkyBus. The driver said certainly and also their ticket is cheaper by a ringgit compare to SkyBus.
Overall, the flight journey was quite all right, except with minor nuisance such as people cutting queues. I was definitely expecting to experience worse than what I’d gone through after hearing others about AirAsia. I individually think that AirAsia has upgraded and expanded to a better airliner therefore old comment may have not been relevant.
Total money spent:
Returned flight tickets to Penang From KL: RM279.00 (2 persons)
Taxi from Serdang to LCCT: RM60.00
Aerobus fleet from LCCT to Serdang: RM16.00 (2 persons)
We experienced it.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I had some terrible experinces with AirAsia.
Statement by the CEO that AirAsia’s crew is better than MAS Airlines is absolutely not true!
My family went to Phuket last year in February. We booked online which was inclusive for my maid.Unfortunately my maid could not make it for the trip because she had to go back when her father fell ill. Therefore, we were aware that we have to pay the fare still and we did.
At the airport, we were about to checkin our luggage when the staff told us crudely to take away our bags because there were some outstanding payments.
Puzzled, my husband went to the payment counter to find out that payment for airport tax in Thailand was not paid. This is due to new ruling by AirAsia (when we booked this was not in the terms and conditions)…
Then, after paying, they also insisted that we pay for the tax for our maid (who will not be there of course). So we paid and asked the staff at the check-in counter that Thai airport won’t charge us again. We just wanted a verification…because before that I went to Chiang Mai by MAS and I paid at the Thai Airport for their taxes.
The staff answer…..I’m not sure!Just imagine….my husband got irritated and scoulded the staff. There was this Indian fellow that came in between and threatened that he will call the police.
Anyhow, after some explaination, she (the staff) apologized to us. The Indian fellow never did! I had my two young children in hand (4 & 2 years oled respectively) when we were asked to remove the bags from the check-in counter. Note that there were no one behind our queue at that time. Long queue was at the Indonesian flights (Pulau Java).
I personally was very upset with the treatment. MAS Airlines is so much better. Yes, we had to pay more but the crew is more polite and knowledgeable. AirAsia seemed to me like more money minded….so what if MAS wants to have RM0 fare promotion. AirAsia start improving your crew rather worrying about the competition. Certainly I prefer MAS…..
Thank you.
October 31st, 2009 at 11:05 pm
can you provide me the taxi contact number for booking?