My AirAsia flight was confirmed in April 2006 by Airasia, and a deduction for the fare was made to my credit card. In November, I received an SMS from AirAsia informing me that the flight has been cancelled and I should call their customer service centre. I tried several times, but of course, the line was always busy.

The questions are:

Isn't it AirAsia's responsibility to fix the situation instead of making it our duty to reach them?

They have been holding our money (charged through our credit cards) all those months (from April till November). Shouldn't they pay us the interest as well since the flight has been cancelled?

The paid-for confirmed flight is a form of contract between the airline, namely AirAsia, and the passenger. In the contract (as per the air ticket), it is the responsibility of the airline to bring us to Point A to Point B as stated in the confirmed booking. Whatever happened to this responsibility?

I brought up all these questions when I managed to get through to one of their customer service officers in February this year just before the date of the cancelled flight. But they stayed firm to their decision to either refund me my money or book me on a flight of a different route.

The flight I had booked was for a Johor Baru-Kota Baru and return. They were offering me an option of Kuala Lumpur-Kota Baru and return, meaning I would have to find my own way to Kuala Lumpur from Johor Baru. Take it of leave it, so they said. The biggest joke was when they said that there was a flight available from Johor Baru to Kuala Lumpur that day, but I would have to pay extra for it.

I don't understand how the Ministry of Transport allows AirAsia to get away with this. The customer service officer from AirAsia told me they have refunded all the passengers of the my cancelled flight without much protest. In short, they were wondering why am I making so much fuss. It is the principal of the matter which I am interested in. I am not interested in getting my money refunded. I am more interested to getting the problem fixed.

AirAsia knows full well that they are manipulating passengers. The little passengers probably won't be bother dealing with a big bully knowing that they can't win anyway. What is worse is that AirAsia don't feel a pinch of guilt when they have maltreated us.

Where is justice? Please someone, do something. Consider how many passengers has been maltreated in such a way. Our country will be forever backward if it insists on having a big company like AirAsia provide a Third World service.