Air Asia, Terrible Encounter

My job requires me to travel intensively, so inevitably, Air Asia is my only choice –well, the only frills-free career in Malaysia for domestic flights. What about Firefly? Seriously, though Firefly is a tiny little plane but the fares are kinda exorbitant compared to Air Asia.

Air Asia bagged the “World Best Low-Cost Airline” and the “Best Low-Cost Airline in Asia” by SKYTRAX World Airline Awards recently. Apparently, this is the fourth consecutive year Air Asia nails that title.  

  

Throughout my many Air Asia flights, no doubt, the flight attendants are indeed friendly and helpful, they deserve my credits. Likewise, for the ground crews, it is different story.

I heard many bad stories and complaints about Air Asia’s ground crew. I didn’t  bother much because I haven’t encountered any rude or unbecoming service from the ground crew until recently.

I was in the queue to get my boarding pass checked. So there was a family of close to 10 next to my queue. It was bit of commotion because the ground crew who conducts the checking refused to let the family to enter to departure hall because their luggages have exceeded the permitted size. 

I believe the family isn’t local because their English is not our typical slang. I guess they are from China or Korea. The mother, politely asked the person who was checking the boarding pass where to check in the luggage.

“Can you please help me?I just want to know where to check in the luggage. There is no counter for the check in”, said the mother who was in distress.

Not only not directing the lady to appropriate counter, he also asked the custom officer not to let them in.

The only answer from that guy was “ I don’t know” and he kept checking other boarding passes nonchalantly.

 I was like WTH, though we are clearly know that we are taking a budget airline but do they have to compromise the service as well? Even the passengers did not aware of the permitted sizes of the luggage, shouldn’t the ground crew assist them ?

Actually I heard another story. It happened to my friend’s friend who is a Vietnamese and he was taking Air Asia flight back home. Apparently, he was directed wrongly by the ground crew into a wrong queue for the check-in. Since you know the queue at LCCT is pretty long, so he queued up in the long and wrong queue, then moved to the correct long queue after directed by the counter crew. One wrong long queue and one correct long queue, this caused him to miss the flight. So he took the matter to the Air Asia’s HQ and he spoketo some of the senior level from the management. Well, you guess it, the typical Malaysian feedback when it comes to complain- “we will look in this matter”. I don’t know they really look into the matter or not but Air Asia did not compensate for his missed flight due to misdirection from the ground crew. 

Try to complain their service? You better think twice. Air Asia indeed has a customer service via telephone – AirAsiaX Premium Line at 600 85 8888 which operates from 9 am to 6 pm Monday to
Sunday and the charge is RM1.95 per minute. Yes, you read that right. So you dial, then you have to gone through Tekan 1 untuk Bahasa Tekan 2 untuk English, then proceed to please press 1 etc until you reach an operator. Then the operator will definitely put you on hold. You can count how much it will cost for make an enquiry or just to complain. BTW, it is only available for AirAsiaX, other please logon to the websites for answers.

Actually I have more stories to share but since Malaysians are bored with unheeded complaints, I guess if I continue, it will be a very boring and long entry.

Air Asia, everyone can fly but can’t complain!