I have to confess that the recent day hop to Kota Bharu was my first on Air Asia. I have been hearing mixed experience from those who have been on one before. Air Asia was efficient, straight to the point and basically you pay for what you get.
I was not sure how to categorise my recent experience. On the whole, it was not bad. However, flying off from the LCCT have one drawback however. Traveling to the terminal from KL was a pain as I usually take the KLIA Express from Sentral. There were bus service from Sentral but being buses, I can't assume that it would be as efficient as the 27 minutes travel time you get from the train service. You would also enjoy the convenience of being able to check in your luggages from the Sentral Air Terminal. And since I was able to travel on Business often, there were no such service on Air Asia - disclaimer, I do not pay for my travels usually. Cost was never an issue. The reason for taking Air Asia on that occasion was the timing of the flights. But due to the hold-up which I would mention later, I could have used MAS instead and still reach my house at about the and time.
I decided to drive to LCCT rather than call for a cab and parked at e public space just in front of the terminal. I was only charged RM 27 fees for parking from 7am to 6pm. Open car park though, so your car would bee losers to the elements. The roofed space was located a furthers walk back and I was on a rush then. The terminal would also take you an extra 20 minutes travel from the KLIA main terminal - I almost missed my flight that morning since it took longer than I expected to get to the LCCT.
Landed in the rain, and finally allowed out of the cabin after 30 minutesThe second issue was the fact that we could not disembark or board in heavy rain. According to the crew, opening the cabin door was the main problem as the rain will get into the cabin and make the floors wet. Practical excuse I thought. It would cost the airline tons of money to leave the jet idle on the tarmac, so I was sure they were not making it up.
So the bottom line, would I take Air Asia for traveling with my precious brats? Definitely no. They would go berserk at the terminal. But traveling on short hops like I did last time, I would definitely do it again but if the schedule was tight and I couldn't afford a delay, then definitely I would have prefer MAS.
