With the rise of Air Asia in the region, Malaysians are happy to see chances to go for longer and better holidays to better location even with their limited budgets.

Destinations

To be honest, the three major budget airlines that I am going to discuss later has their own interesting points.

 Air Asia

Being one of the most successful Malaysian company in the world, I am definitely happy to promote Air Asia to you all. In fact, for all the 6 flights that I’ve taken in the  past 2 years, it’s all Air Asia. One of the major reasons I chose them was just because I am staying in KL and thus very near to take the flight there. 

Air Asia has definitely expanded huge enough now, with future flights to Taiwan and more China’s destinations are definitely a very interesting thing to see for a Malaysian like me! =P You know what’s the BEST thing here?! Flying to London now may cost you less than RM1500 for 2-way!! How amazing isn’t it?!

 Tiget Airways

Well Tiger Airways is quite similar to Jet Star so I would focus more there. =P

 JetStar

Another budget airline (Australian company based in Singapore) that actually served quite a lot of interesting places. Where else you can get two-way ticket from Singapore-Perth for only SGD178 all-inclusive???!! (That’s like RM400!!!) If you’re going to Australia for a fun holidays, I would recommend JetStar!!

By looking at the destinations that each airlines can offer, obviously Air Asia beat the other two by offering more choices to other places while Jetstar is concentrating on both Australia and New Zealand. But JetStar still need to work more on as those who stay in KL and Singapore still cannot access direct flight to New Zealand.

Air Asia, being the first budget airline in the region surely has an advantage in exploring new routes and thanks to their effort we can now fly to Europe and Beijing!!

So Air Asia wins the first round!!

Air Asia 1 - JetStar 0 – Tiger 0

KL – Singapore

I am going to focus on the air fares particularly on the route KL-Singapore on March 30 to make a comparison on their usual charges. There is no annouced promotion for any of the three budget airlines (Air Asia, Jet Star and Tiger Airways) thus far and I am just purely searching through for their ‘normal’ price and what they can offer me if I decided to go back suddenly from KL – Singapore (or vice versa) in a 2 week advanced notice.

First, their price.

i. Ticket ‘Base’ Price

I browsed through 3 airlines for a ticket from KL to Singapore on March 30 and chose roughly the same time for the lowest airfare that they can offer. Surprisingly all of them offer a very good and low price even there is no promotion! In fact both JetStar and Tigerairways offer ZERO-AIRFARE while Air Asia lost a little bit with RM1.00 price ticket just slightly lgging behind.

But… !!!

Air Asia

Tiger Airways

Jet Star

I bet you can see the difference now clearly. Though both JetStar and Tiger offer zero airfare, their admin charges and taxes are obviously higher than Air Asia. Eventually the air fares become…

Air Asia – RM48.50

Tiger – RM57.00

Jet Star – RM68

Airasia wins again this round by clear mile!! Followed by Tiger.

Ticket ‘Base’ Price: 

Air Asia 3 (+2) - JetStar 0 – Tiger 1 (+1)

ii. Food Menu

Again, I browsed through the 3 airlines for their food. To be honest with you, I’ve not tasted all three of them and so I cannot judge them by taste. But I searched through their menu and the results are …

Air Asia

Since last year they have revamped their menu and now it has quite a variety of food available from local delicacy like Nasi Lemak to Western Chicken Folicia. “Heavier” meal costs RM7 if you booked online together with your ticket and RM9 if you bought it onboard. Quite reasonable I can say.

Tiger

Surprisingly there is no “heavy” or hot food served onboard. I’m not sure whether it’s good or not but the price seemed reasonable for a Singaporean but much more expensive than the already-expensive-AirAsia’s food.

The only good thing is that… They serve liquor onboard while Air Asia don’t… (Air Asia X do serve liquors) But doesn’t matter as I’m not an alcoholic and I can live without alcohol for a simple few hours flight!!

JetStar

Tell you what. Their menu is so mysterious that I cannot find anything on what they served onboard (for short course) but based on the internet user review. Thumbs down! I give them a thumb down too for not disclosing anything on the internet!! Oh gosh?!! What era is this?? Is your food so mysterious that you want to keep it secret to surprise your passengers onboard?!!

Definitely go for Air Asia for their HOT FOOD and reasonable price!!

Air Asia 4  - JetStar 0 - Tiger 1

iii. Add-On Services

And there are lots of add-on services like seat selection, luggae add-on, insurance etc that just work the same way like your Telecommunication Company that plan to suck as much money from you as possible. Anyway I’m going to explain how it worked in these 3 airlines.

For all 3 airlines basically they worked roughly the same in Seat Selection where you select a seat that you like, pay a nominal fee and there you go!

Air Asia just introduced this system 1 or 2 months ago and this definitely relieved their passengers as I need not to walk faster or run or splint or jump or scream or whatever to get on the plane fast enough to get a window seat.(Anyway window seat isn’t any better either..) Simple enough, pay RM25 for ’special’ seat or RM5 for other seats.

Tiger charges the most expensive fee for seat selection. That’s RM12.50 for standard seat and RM62.50 for ‘HOT’ seat. Hot your head!!

For Jet Star, they only charge if you are choosing those ’special’ seat for RM45. It’s RM20 more expensive but what’s good about their system is that they don’t charge for all other normal seat that you choose. How good, aren’t they?! It’s like the dracula’s fangs have reached your neck so close that they just let you go ’cause they stok stok don’t want to suck your blood anymore. (maybe they suck somewhere else…)

Other add-on services offered by Air Asia are insurance that comes with the online booking system which allows you to suck the money back from them if they ever fuck mess up with your holiday schedule with plane delay, luggage trouble or etc. And the bus service from KL Sentral is a lot cheaper if you booked together in the online booking system for just RM6.50 (normal price RM9). 

Do you want to buy a medical box onboard?!

Air Asia just won’t let go of a chance to earn the money…

Really… Air Asia is my BIG CHOICE kicking the other 2 airlines’ asses so hard!!! Now I shall annouce the winner of this battle…

To be fair, all the data I’ve got are at the time of publication of this log post was made. If any of the marketing officer from the any other airlines that would like to make clarification or sponsorship or anything, you may do so via my email address that you can find on the top right corner of this blog.

Since Air Asia did not pay for this post. I cannot let them win so easily!!

*****Air Asia Marketing Officer can choose pay certain amount of premium to take down the section below*****

Try Malaysia Airlines too!! They are having promotion too!! Though the price is more expensive but what you get is totally different!!

I’ve checked. Air Asia ticket final price costs me RM55.50 w/ food w/o insurance. While the better service MALAYSIA AIRLINES offer you RM99 for all the comfort that you may get onboard. Choose yourself!!