Me loves you. Review on Air Asia

Ah yes Air Asia, my favorite airline for short flights. Took way too many flights with them to base this review on just one trip. I guess this would be a review based on my experiences with them for five long years and I usually start my journey from Kuala Lumpur, the review will be on their KUL side of operations. Since I am based in South East Asia most of the time, Air Asia comes very handy when going on trips to neighboring countries. I could take MAS, Singapore Airlines or Thai Airways, but seriously, why would I spend a ton of money on an air ticket when the flying time is less than 2 hours?

Checkin: Well checkin is always a little annoying with Air Asia. They do have their own terminal called LCCT (short for Low Cost Carrier Terminal) in Malaysia. But it is infact one of the cargo terminals fitted with air conditioning, escalators and other stuff people need. Checkin counters are always crowded and people pretty much queue up too close for my liking. I think I might be a little agoraphobic (lets not go there though). Right now they charge an extra 3 USD to actually checkin at the counter and they encourage everyone to either do web checkin or at one of the kiosks. I think it's a good idea. Atleast the crowd moves faster. Since it is a low cost carrier, they do charge every extra kilogram when it comes to baggage. I really don't find anything wrong with that. I could always purchase extra baggage allowance online when I book my tickets and it ain't expensive. I don't think the ladies at the checkin counter are actually harassing the travelers by weighing the bags and charging more for extra weight. Usually just dropping of the bag(s) takes 15 to 20 mins waiting. Once the ladies at the checkin did stop me when I was traveling to Sydney via Singapore. They thought I might need a visa to enter Singapore and asked me to wait for a while till they confirmed with the Singapore immigration. It was boring to wait, but they did apologize for the inconvenience. Really nothing to complain there though since I had a doubt about that too and planned on just rolling with a hunch.

Boarding: Boarding is pretty smooth. The Air Asia staff do check the travelers passports one last time before boarding though. Mostly to check if anybody is traveling without a visa. The low cost terminal doesn't have jet bridges so everybody has to walk to the plane along shaded paths with directions boards to each parking bay. When they announce the boarding they always mention the "hot seat" guests should line up first. But that's no big deal anyway. I like to take my time for the crowd to move along first and just follow them a good 20 feet behind. It is cool to walk around looking at half a dozen planes waiting along the way. Reminds me of bus stations. They have a huge problem though. Whenever a flight is less than half full, they move you automatically to a flight a couple of hours before or after the one you booked. They do SMS a day or two before the departure date, but I can imagine a lot of people's plans going awry. Luckily whenever I had this situation, I didn't have any trouble other than 50 dollars wasted on a hotel booking once.

The Journey: I never really traveled on an Air Asia plane for more than 2 hours though. The seats are a little crammed up and the entire fleet is made of only A330's . The food choices are great and makes me wonder if they run a tiny cafeteria on the planes. I never got anything like a meal onboard, but I always get some wonderful smells from whatever my fellow passengers order. The prices are pretty much the same as any low to mid range restaurant in Kuala Lumpur. That's a lil bit of a surprise since they could've easily made up the prices due to the fact that nobody has any other choice on a plane. They don't have any inflight entertainment. For a 2 hour flight, I don't think I need any creature comforts other than a seat with proper seat belts and a good pilot. It's just me though. The flight attendants are more like waiters/waitresses on Air Asia. I can imagine why that is. Most of the time the cabin is quite noisy with people chatting about just like a restaurant and I don't think I could handle it for more than 2 hours. I always like to imagine myself traveling a bus with wings when on an Air Asia plane. Well atleast they are cheaper and faster than a bus from say Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. I had delays twice. One due to some runway problems in Jakarta. The trip that should've taken me 2 hours took more than 3 and a half hours, most of it flying in circles above CGK airport. The pilot even had to refuel in some tiny airport 500 kilometers away and fly back to the landing queue. But I guess this is not Air Asia's fault. The other one was in Phuket. The plane was on the taxi way to take off, but it had some electrical fault and had to stop at the maintenance hanger for an hour. Atleast the air conditioning was on most of the time. I am not really mad at them for this though. I really don't want to fly on a plane that has issues even before take off. Other than these two incidents, they are always on time and most of the time when flying from CGK to KUL, the plane lands 30 to 45 mins early. I do like that.

Overall, I like Air Asia for getting me around SE Asia for less than half the price of a fancy meal for two with a bottle of wine. Would I recommend them? well it entirely depends on you. If you are on a time sensitive trip, be wary of Air Asia. If you are traveling for leisure and don't mind the rare flight changes or willing to risk a lil and take advantage of the cheap tickets, Air Asia is a very good choice.