Korean Job Discussion Forums

[austinmc86]

Is it possible to buy AirAsia tickets in-person? I would rather use my Korean money instead of my U.S. card.

Also, would my KEB card work? It has only worked so far for Korean owned airline companies.

[wishfullthinkng]

don't do it. save yourself the hassle and pay a little extra for a real airline. air asia just cost me over 1,000usd for their shenanigans and it's now my mission to let others know how awful of an airline it is and that you realistically save no money after the hoops they make you jump through and their piss-poor service.

[b-class rambler]

[wishfullthinkng]

so this is what happened: first they changed my flight without telling me. this is standard practice for low cost carriers if one flight is not full enough, they want to change the time, baggage loader bob wanted to watch a few more minutes of dancing with the stars, etc. this had happened to me on another low cost carrier in the philippines, but unfortunately that's all the phils have to offer. anyways, i digress. back to the original story. so i had rushed from penang on the very first bus (which somehow no one at the bus station knew when it would arrive) thinking i'd be cutting it super close for my flight. when i reached lcc they simply stated that my flight had left many hours earlier and that they had "tried to call me". um. okay. trying to call my korean number (and failing at it) while i'm traveling out of korea is a great way to tell me you decided to change my flight at the last minute...

i missed my flight and they booked me for a flight the next morning. i had to get a last minute hotel in kul which is never cheap and i had to pay for the hotel for that nite in my destination country because it was too late to cancel. i was traveling with a business partner so we had to book 4 more flights to get where we needed to go to get there on time via other carriers in my destination country because an unexpected one day setback made ALL the difference. air asia's staff told me that since i purchased their worthless insurance that all this would be covered.

nope. they lie through their teeth to get people to go away. i suspected an awful airline such as this wouldn't cover the costs (which i HAD to do at this point) and called their insurance line. their insurance policy was a flat out joke.

next day, i get to the airport (the taxi costs to and from the airport so many times were not insubstantial and lcc is the worst airport in the world hands down) and they wouldn't issue me a boarding pass because they said that i needed a visa. i told them i had one waiting for me as a visa on arrival and they insisted that my destination country didn't do voa's. i told them that they did, because i indeed had one waiting there for me. after 45 minutes of them trying to get their heads out of their asses they finally agreed to give me a boarding pass. as they were getting the boarding pass set up they then told me i would have to wait twenty minutes before the flight DEPARTED to check in because i was put on standby. i would not have had time to make it on the plane let alone through immigration 20 minutes before the plane left the tarmac. up to this point i had kept cordial but being told something so ludicrious i raised hell and after 30 more minutes of head-in-assery they told me i was off standby. i ran like hell to try and catch my plane and barely did, all with my stress level higher than they'd been in a long time due to all the sheer and utter incompetence.

i boarded the plane and to my un-surprise half the plane is empty. none of the ridiculous "hot seats" were taken and half of the regular seats were empty. there was absolutely no reason i should have been put on standby, especially considering that they had dicked me over hard the evening before. i had flown them once before and told myself i never would again but i went with them this time against my better judgement because it was sadly one of the only carriers who could get me to my destination at the time i needed to be there (but that obviously didn't happen).

all in all it cost me and my partner a little north of 1,000usd that air asia will not be repaying. this is comparing it to paying 100usd more for a real airline. and with a real airline you get a real airport, real service, real airplanes that don't loop the same one god awful song for the thirty minutes you are trafficking on the tarmac, you get free food and beverage, you get airline and alliance mileage, you get lounge access, you get remunerations if a flight is cancelled/changed without your consent, you get a real flying experience, all for really what amounts to a pittance compared to the aggravations of not having them.

so yes, as i said before, pay the little extra and go with a real carrier. air asia is a total disaster and a mind-boggling organization of deceits and ineptitudes. from my many times there my opinion is that the entirety of malaysia is extremely incompetent when it comes to public transportation, lead by air asia and all long-haul public buses. it's incredibly awful.

edit: for even more horror stories have a look at air asia's official facebook page. it's incredible how much negative feedback and bad experiences are shared on their company's official fb page...

[b-class rambler]

Thanks, interesting read.

Changing the departure time without your knowledge IS incredibly annoying. I've had that done to me by a couple of fairly major airlines before.

BTW, what reason did they give for denying your insurance claim?


I recently had the option of using AirAsia for a journey I was booking. It would've worked out a little bit cheaper than the airlines/routes I eventually decided on, although significantly less convenient location and time-wise. To be honest, even their own website was giving me an impression - how accurate I don't know - that AirAsia was going to be a pain in the @rse to deal with generally.

[Yaya]

I usually stay in Little India when in KL. It's not bad there as I got a nice room for around 50 bucks.

[young_clinton]

Go to the Air Asia Kiosk at the airport. You can buy tickets there for a pittance more than what you would pay online.

I don't like Air Asia either. The service and seating arrangement are hideous and they are still expensive realistically speaking.