In addition to the comments made by the writer of the letter headlined AirAsia: Now everyone can fly but you, I wish to highlight a fairly recent practise of AirAsia in which it arbitrarily totally cancels scheduled flights.
These are most probably due to ‘commercial reasons’ (read: insufficient passengers) and the airline then advises (via SMS text) passengers already booked on such flights, to take the ‘next available flight’!
This has occurred to me twice on the Labuan to KLIA sector whence the 10.55am flight departing Labuan bound for KLIA was simply cancelled and passengers who had already paid and booked for that flight were advised to take the 3.25pm flight instead.
Since we received the SMS notification over two weeks in advance, I doubt that the cancellation could be attributed to ‘mechanical or technical’ malfunctions of the aircraft.
The outfit penalises passengers for amending their flight itinerary, yet, finds it convenient to totally cancel flights for ‘commercial reasons’ without providing passengers any recourse to compensation, be it monetary nor complimentary.
I was one of the more vocal proponents of AirAsia when it initially commenced operations, writing to the media complimenting it for showing the national airline that things could be done in a better and more efficient manner.
However, observing the sad decline in AirAsia's services and the way it treats its customers, I must say that I now strongly advocate that another ‘no-frills’ airline be licenced to operate in Malaysia to give AirAsia a run for its money.
No. 48, Jalan Kemuja, Bangsar Utama 59000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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