Air Asia: Cheap Flights?

As regular readers of this blog would know, I've long been a proponent of Air Asia, the airline that offers supposedly cheap flights all across Asia, and has been expanding their routes relentlessly since they kicked off in 2003 with their Macau - Bangkok run, among other initial routes.

Their motto is "Now Everyone Can Fly" and they originally promoted themselves as a budget airline to offer cheap and no-frills flights.

Now it's getting difficult to keep up with where they fly, as it seems a new airport is added every week to their list, and many new countries are also added. They now cover a half-dozen cities in India, and not everything flies out of KL (Kuala Lumpur) anymore. For example, they are proposing direct runs from Bangkok to New Delhi, as well as Bangkok to Kolkata. They also have a proposed run from Bangkok to Nanning in South China which is a very interesting development! I'm really hoping they can get something in or out of Kunming (also in S China) and would imagine it's only a matter of time.

Off the top of my head, they are also flying to airports in France, London, Australia, Korea, Japan, and Iran.

With all this expansion, new routes, and new features as the company grows, one has to wonder if they can keep operating under their original business model. Recent trips with these guys shows their prices are going way up, and hunting for bargain flights becomes more difficult.

But I think this has a lot more to do with the 'demand side' of things. Recent experiences with Air Asia have been on international flights to/from China during peak holiday times. As the masses have all this money now, it is fast becoming a nightmare to enter or leave the country. Recall I've long given up on internal travel during holiday times due to a string of inconveniences, but the SE Asia option isn't a cakewalk either. Airlines are only basing their prices on how much these new millions of pampered rich Chinese people can afford for what constitutes their version of travel. These guys have money coming out of their ears, they like to show off, and they will pay, pay, pay. Where does that leave me? Competing with them, doing the same thing, at the same time.

Ironically, me and the masses have this one thing in common: we can only take the holidays at fixed times the government sets.

I was shocked to find a one-way Air Asia flight from KL to an airport near Shanghai cost nearly $700. That is if I were to book about 1.5 months in advance! It's gonna sell out for sure. The one-way flights from KL to other Chinese cities were in the $300-400 range. Similar international flights heading to or from China were pricey all over the place. Get ready for some of this. Round trip flights to Koh Samui. $1200. Round-trip flights to Bali: $1500. One-way flights to Bangkok: $400. Mind you, not all of this was Air Asia, as they don't fly out of Shanghai directly, but even the Air Asia flights (as above) were not cheap.

So I managed to beat the system by employing similar tactics as when doing a trip in and out of Vietnam during the holiday crunch last October. Any seasoned travel would know the drill here. Use domestic flights, do land border crossings, take night flights or early morning flights, etc. Due to a complex series of flight arrangements I managed to get awesome deals and it's actually pretty good considering the time of year. But it took a lot of searching and cobblings things together to make it work.

To prove that Air Asia does still offer cheap flights, it wasn't hard to do that. I just had to look at dates outside of the Spring Festival range, as well as domestic Malaysian, Thai, and Indonesia flights for comparable distances.

Sometimes I really wish that the Chinese didn't start getting into this money thing, as there is basically no stopping this one. Or, if they insist on money and holidays, maybe it's time to re-think the whole idea of everyone traveling at fixed times.