YES! Finally Zee Avi* is back in Malaysia! It is our great honor to be a part of this "LIVE in KL" concert this coming 20th March 2010 and we want to make it more meaningful by giving out 3 Pairs of VIP Meet & Greet Passes to meet her!

All you need to do is...

--> TELL us your "KANTOI" experience OR share your friend's "KANTOI" experience

via
A) Twitter - Yes, write in 1 message (within 140 character) with tag of @AirAsiaDotCom
- ONE winner

B) Blog Comments - Begin your story right here in the comment box! (no limitation of words)
- TWO winners

Don't know what "KanToi" is about?? Listen to it right here:

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Contest Period

Start - 1501hrs, 10 March 2010 (GMT +8:00hrs)
End - 2359hrs, 17 March 2010 (GMT +8:00hrs)

Submit your entry now before 17 March 2010! Only ONE entry / or FIRST entry will be conditioned. We look forward to hear your "Kantoi" experience!

Reference:

*Zee Avi (born Izyan Alirahman, also known as KokoKaina; born in 1986) is a Malaysian singer-songwriter, guitarist, and ukulele player. She was born in Miri, Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. She moved to Kuala Lumpur when she was 12. She studied fashion design at American InterContinental University in London. Source from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zee_Avi)

*AirAsiaRedTix.com
Booking : http://www.airasiaredtix.com/zeeavi.aspx
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RedTix

Terms and Conditions (read more...)

I am a regular flyer of AirAsia. Even long before I started working here. But recently, my trip to Dubai, I bought the tickets with MAS, our neighbour. One of the reason was, AirAsia does not fly to Dubai. Bought the tickets 4 weeks before and I was all excited about it. Why? Because its not always that I get to fly with another airline and I was looking forward to enjoy the whole package – the Malaysian Hospitality to be exact and need not pay for the food onboard! ;-) Hey! hey! I am still a passenger, ok!!

Kuala Lumpur to Dubai, on MH160 22nd Feb, seated in ‘Economy class’, we transited for 1 hour in Karachi.Overall, the flight was nice. Nothing to shout about. I managed to make friends with one of the stewardess onboard too. She was the friendliest among all. Sincere, warm smile throughout the flight. And we even bid goodbyes when we bumped into each other at the carousel while collecting our luggage. The rest of the members? Sad to say, even when I looked at some of them, tried to smile and create a conversation, they seemed to be in their own world and too arrogant to return the smile .No doubt they did their job well, by attending to the passengers who called them one after another, quite immediate, however I felt there was lack of warmness in the service.

I returned on 28th Feb on MH157 and it was a night flight. Again, looking forward to it and I was expecting it to be a better experience as I don’t know when I would be traveling with them again.Hey!! its not cheap, ok!! And maybe my expectation was also because of the ‘Malaysian Hospitality’ advertisement that I have seen constantly everywhere. It is seldom that I get to travel with them, so I definitely look forward to it! But this time, I was more frustrated. And also sad. That was the feeling I had.

When a passenger pressed the ‘call button’ requiring assistance, they responded to it only around 15 to 20mnts. And compare to the day flight, there were not many people requiring assistance as most of them were sleeping after dinner was served. Well, I experienced it too. I wanted to purchase a duty free item, had to wait nearly 20 minutes before someone attended to me. Then, when he came over, he asked with a serious tone, without a smile , ” Yes? ” Hmm….that wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

It frustrates me because as a passenger, I was really looking forward to enjoy the Malaysian Hospitality ; and especially after paying such a big amount of money. And being a Malaysian myself, I would like to see the warmness in the service provided. It is definitely sad to see a good airline like MAS is not providing the service up to the standards. Being a Malaysian, I am always proud of Malaysia Airlines as our national airline even if I don’t fly with them.

I believe, no matter where we are, which airline we work for, we must be proud of the job we do and we need to have fun doing it. Because this later will reflect in the quality of work we produce and makes people love traveling with us more!!

Service is a feeling. We need to make people feel good and welcome. Smile. Have fun. Enjoy a decent conversation. Especially traveling with us. And when they fall in love with us, they would definitely return for more.

Johnny coughed from the plume of dust kicked up by the sudden halt of a police van that appeared from nowhere. A breath ago he’d just innocently lit up a Sempoerna after offering one to a beggar outside the Basilica Santa Cruz and now a threatening stocky, moustached cop was yanking at his arm.

Cop: You! Come with me!
Johnny: Wha…? What did I do? Wait my buddy is over ther….
Cop( bundles Johnny into van): You ‘ave just committed an offense! Itis a cryme to smoke in public in Kerala!!
Johnny: I’m sorry, I didn’t know , I—
Cop: Ignorance is no igscuse! You should know about the laws of Kerala before you come ‘errre.
Johnny: I… I’m really sorry sir. I didn’t know. I won’t do it again.
Cop: You are lucky I’m ina good mood today. I’ll lettyu off.
Johnny: OK sir, thank you. I’m really sorry.

An extraordinary but nonetheless hilarious welcome we received upon arriving at Cochin. A Keralan tells me that tourists are often shocked by the ban on public smoking.
“What can I say? We are very concerned about your lungs,” was her humourous take on it.

But Cochin, the colonial baton that was passed from one European crown to another over four centuries, is far from unfriendly to visitors. Successive migration thanks to its role as a major trading port from the 16th to 20th centuries explains the cultural diversity of the people here. Fort Cochin, now the rally point for every visitor was the first colonial settlement in India when the Portuguese arrived in the 1503. Then came the Dutch, followed by the British, before the tourists.

As our history books tell us the southwestern coast of India was a major choke point along the spice route. Deterred by hostilities in Calicut, Vasco da Gama’s expedition sailed on to the friendlier coastlines of Cochin and turned it into the capital of Portuguese India before relocating to Goa. The Portuguese conquests of course, set ambitions for maritime exploration that went as far as Melaka.

So in a way, Fort Cochin reminded me of Melaka but on a much larger scale with numerous basilicas and cathedrals dotting its landscape. Most intriguing however was the Jewish community residing in Jew Town. Learning about Jews in Kerala wasn’t quite something I’d expect to come across in Cochin but when you think about it, this was after all a major port along the vast Arabian sea, back in the day.

The Paradesi Synagogue in Jew Town (Rs5 per entry; no shoes, no cameras) displays a pictorial essay of Kerala’s early contact with the Jews. Relations with the Keralan royalty were established in Cranganore when a large number of Jews sought refuge from the destruction of their motherland during the Middle Ages, although stories about contact through trade long before that do exist. After a millennium of prosperity, the death of the last descendant of a pioneer Jewish chieftain led to political rifts. The community’s troubles escalated when it came under Moorish attack for its apparent dominance of the pepper trade. With villages set ablaze the Jews fled south to Cochin.

The Pardesi Synagogue remains a bastion of Pardesi Jewish pride but these days there are more Kashmiri run souvenir shops along the ethnic passage than there are Jews. A handful of seniors remain, some selling embroidered souvenirs while helping to preserve their unique heritage but many have emigrated to the Israel and parts of the West.

I encountered a young Jewish lady at the synagogue. According to a local bookshop owner she is the last young ‘un in town but only because a failed romance in Israel brought her back to Kerala, so goes the local gossip. Without a new generation to take charge the Jews are hoping that ownership of the synagogue and their accompanying relics will be taken over and preserved by the State.

For more pictures of Kochi, head on over to http://www.flickr.com/photos/airasia/sets/72157623427434047/ (read more...)

The Indian tourism board’s tagline, Incredible India inspires a litany of alliterations.

I can’t help coming up with my own: interesting India, intriguing India, intoxicating India, indomitable india; irresistible India. This is not merely empty play on words. India is indeed all that (somebody stop me, please).

Today we discovered the less wondrous part. Johnny, my now de facto travel buddy, has come down with a bout of nausea and vomiting after the lassi from lunch: inedible, indigestible India.

Thing is, if you’re spending this much time in a country where basic sanitation seems more luxury than necessity you ought to be prepared to run into... well the runs. As a friend who spent nine years here warned me, “No one escapes food poisoning in India!” *Gulp*

You’d be doing yourself a favour if you included in your India Survival Kit -- apart from an open mind and an indifferent attitude towards dirt and grime -- some oral rehydration salts, imodium, charcoal pills and for the traditionalist, perhaps some ‘poh chai’ pills.

Fortunately the bug seems mild enough to not threaten happy days in Trivandrum, our next stop.

Trivandrum or more politically correct, Thiruvananthapuram is the capital of Kerala, one of two states in India with a communist government. No, the irony in the Kerala tourism board’s adoption of the phrase “God’s Own Country” did not escape us... nor did the very prominent temples, churches, mosques and synagogues. Marxism and religion have found a comfortable compromise here.

Socialism has done the state good. One fact I always knew about Kerala even before I arrived was that its high literacy rate trumps that of some of the world’s richest countries.

To be honest there isn’t a whole lot to do in Trivandrum itself although we did give the temple-church circuit a go. My top pick would be the Puthe Maliga Palace Museum which was formerly the residence of the Rajas of Travancore.

It is the yoga ashrams and beaches outside the city that are bigger draws in Trivandrum. Chilling out on Kovalam beach after a therapeutic Ayurvedic massage is going to be a princely indulgence but thankfully, they come at proletariat prices.

Meanwhile, stomach ache or not, we’re off to savour some delicious Keralan cuisine. What’s travel insurance for if you can’t risk it a little?

For more pictures of Trivandrum, head on over to http://www.flickr.com/photos/airasia/sets/72157623376827608/ (read more...)

Ever since the first new A330 aircraft delivery for AirAsia X came with the “non-reclining” black leather seats in November 2008, we knew this was going to be a big issue for us. Sure enough, the complaints started pouring in incessantly about these uncomfortable seats.

We’ve been tackling this for almost a year and a half, and now, finally, we believe we have a much better seat solution for our long-haul guests.

When we first ordered aircraft in 2007, the global aviation industry was very different. It was the boom time, and airlines were ordering new planes by the hundreds. Seat manufacturers were buzzing with more orders than they could fill. We were left with only one seat supplier who was willing to design seats for our aircraft, at a reasonable price, according to our required timeframe. We had no other choices.

They pitched to us a new design called ‘fixed-back shell’ seats. The idea was that the seat would not recline backwards, but would achieve the same recline-angle by the seat bottom gliding forward and the seat back moving along to get its ‘recline’ angle. The advantage was supposed to be better personal space management, so that you’re not bothered when the person in front leans back (especially when you’ve got the meal tray down trying to eat or work on your laptop, or when you need to get out to the aisle).

Lesson Learned. When the seats were manufactured, this design turned out to be very problematic, mainly because the cushion was too hard, the gliding mechanism too stiff, and edge of the seat bottom that was supposed to drop down to create ‘knee-space’ did not – which meant knees were banging on the seat in front. It was a disaster.

Our team tried to go back to all the seat suppliers to get a better design. As fate would have it, the industry turned upside down by llate 2008, and new aircraft orders almost screeched to a halt. Suddenly, seat manufacturers had extra capacity. We finally got a much better design proposal from the best supplier in the business. Took our joint team one year to detail out the designs, put the seats through safety certification (a very rigorous process), and get them manufactured for delivery.

New Economy Seat Back to Traditional Recline. 31" pitch for A330, 32" pitch for A340

We decided to move away from the traditional ‘black’ leather, and opted for a mix of red and grey, to brighten up and make the cabin less ‘optically constricted’.

Brighter Cabin

We also made a bold decision to scrap our ‘premium economy’ 38” pitch seats and replace them with full lie-flat bed business class seats. We felt the economics were very similar between 28 premium economy seats and 12 lie-flat bed seats, and therefore we might as well opt for the latter and up the quality of our product. Our Air Canada business class seats (on the A340s flying to London) gave us confidence that we could create a new airline product category – full lie-flat bed seats, for the price similar to other legacy carriers’ economy seat and a fraction of business class seat. After all, we felt people wanted most was a comfortable seat. The free-flowing champagne, five-star cuisine and lounge does not justify the thousands of dollars more charged in a normal business class fare. Oh yes, we’ve also added power socket on these premium seats!

World's First lie-Flat Bed Seats on a Low Cost Carrier!

Power Sockets!

The first plane with the new seats has now started operations. If you’ve been on this plane, do let me know what you think of the seats. Other existing aircraft will all go through the seat change, and by June 2010, we should be able to complete all of our AirAsia X retrofit aircraft. Hopefully, we wont face any logistics and supply issues.

In parallel, we’ve also decided to move away from in-seat in-flight entertainment systems (screens on every seat). Unfortunately, demand simply is not there to cover the massive cost of the system, the cost of Hollywood content, and the extra weight and complexity from the wiring. We think portable units are the way forward, and are now working on a new portable media solution that we hope to debut by mid-year.

One thing we’ve learned is that we’ve always got to be on our toes. Sometimes we don’t get things right the first time, but we’ve got to change and adapt. Standing still is not an option for us.

Thanks for all the constructive comments on our seats. We've listened. We've invested and revamped. Please bear with us during the transition period over the next few months.