Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Air Asia No Fuel Surcharge Flights

Today's thestar online headlines read...

too good to be true?.. "AirAsia becomes the first airline in the world to do away with the fuel surcharge for all its flights." Flight period -June 22 to Oct 24, 2009

Last night my Pa asked if I was going to try to grab one of the 500,000 seats available. I told him, 'What for waste my time, surely cannot get one la. By the time I get in, the ticket prices would have gone up.' (the usual air asia tactics..). Over the years, I have never HAD ANY LUCK getting the $0 dollar deals. Either the destination was not right, timing was not right or I just could not get into the Air Asia page.

Over lunch, I casually mentioned to Vir in HK to try if she was interested. While I was just trying to even launch the damn page to just browse at the offers, the mentioned she's already at payment page for the HK-KL return flights and already managed to find the $0 flights to Singapore as well. Damn...the snail speed streamyx.....

OK...so I thought, I am not giving up. Launch page, relaunch page, what may seem like eternity man!!! And halfway, I had people sending me emails about this so-called air asia gimmicks.

Emails that read (extracts of ppl's conversations I think) "I am not too sure. I was monitoring the ticket price for KCH-KUL sector for Jan 27 for the past two weeks. After reading the above report this morning, I checked the price again.There were consistent increases for the ticket prices on Jan 27th across all flights for that day. I cannot comment for other sectors within AirAsia network. Did they scrap the fuel surcharge, or they just add it to the base ticket price?

Aren't you forgetting to tell us something Tony?Yesterday I just happened to be checking the cost of a flight at the end of November to Phnom Penh which was RM 220 in each direction plus the fuel surcharge. Now I am confronted with the image of a smiling Tony Fernandes (well you might be, eh?) announcing his act of 'charity' in doing away with the fuel surcharge. Indeed the fuel surcharge has been removed from the price now...The only problem is that the flight price (now RM312) has miraculously increased by a similar amount! I sincerely doubt I am the first person to notice this strange phenomenon."

So to verify the degree of truth to this statement, I tried my luck with the KL-Siam Reap-KL flights on the air asia mobile page - an alternative site that gets you to the payment page without much hassle but it's pretty un-user friendly, but who cares, as long you don't have to keep refreshing the page. After 1 hr, I am still trying in vain to find a $0 dollar flight. The cheapest I've seen starts from RM160. I swear I tried almost every possible alternative in June and July 2009. And i'm pretty sure I've seen flights costing less than RM100 before this special 'promo' came along

Feeling super fed-up, I sms-ed yellowChimp, my loyal travel companion, 'Eh change la..lets go Hanoi instead'.

So here I was searching for all the possible alternatives again in June/July because 'the monkey' said anything further is 10 FREAKING MONTHS AHEAD. Wahhaha..I think am really a sucker for anything cheap. And I think I have to term myself as a 'Travelholic'.

And yes even the KL-HANOI-KL flights had hardly anything less than RM160 but at least there were the one way $0 dollars here and there. Still not giving up, I continued my quest cause again the monkey said even for a one way RM160--- still too expensive. Muahaha,.......1/2 hr later, I FINALLY managed to find!! KL-HANOI-KL $0 both ways...after all airport tax and admin, approximately RM134 per person!!

Wooohooo so HANOI here we come. Persistence pays off!!! Oh and in case anyone is keen, the only $0 both ways I managed to search are from June 29 - July 2, 2009 but you'll have to take 4 days off work!!!!!Not sure if the flight prices would suddenly jump a notch higher.

P/S: I sent 'you' and sms wishing you could come as well, but you said it's something that we can only dream about now. Maybe someday..........

XOXO folks....till my next post once I've arrived in TOKYO on SUNDAY Morninggggggggggg....wheeeeeettttt

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