Were you aware that AirAsia has an On-Time Guarantee? Nope? Neither was I. Until, that is, last night when I received a pleasant surprise in my Inbox.
AirAsia To Singapore
The Journo and I went to Singapore in August for the Singapore Ultimate Open. Partly because of the price, but mainly because of the flight timing, we chose AirAsia, which flew out from KK Friday night and returned from Singapore on Sunday evening. Perfect for a weekend of Ultimate excess.
I have to say, I have no recent memory of major AirAsia delays on any of my flights and as such, the Friday night flight, as expected, went off without a hitch.
Bloody Sunday
We returned to Shangi Airport on Sunday evening with a good 2 hours before departure, which put us there at just after 6pm.
It had been a long grueling weekend of Ultimate, playing 5 almost-1-hour long games on Saturday and 2 70-minute games on Sunday against teams much better than us. Sunburned, fatigued and in desperate need of sleep, getting onto the flight and settling in was a serious priority.
Our queueless check-in went smooth and we even managed to get seats next to each other on our separately booked tickets. It was when the check-in assistant casually confirmed our boarding time that we were unpleasantly surprised, “… and the flight boards at 10.15pm…”
I did a double take and said “What? That’s not right”, to which she calmly replied as if it was common knowledge, “oh, the flight has been re-timed to 10.45pm due to the late arrival of the incoming flight”, and, in defense of why we hadn’t be alerted, “… it was last-minute, sorry”.
My mind went numb with conflict about what to be angry about:
- that we were not alerted via the cellphone numbers that AirAsia had for us,
- that we now had to wait more than 4 hours to board our flight,
- that we had to miss most of the exciting Ultimate finals to get to the airport on time, or
- that we didn’t get to drink as much of the free beer sponsored by Brewerkz as I wanted to.
Stewing, we stomped off, did some shopping, explored Shangi’s thankfully interesting terminal, had dinner and eventually fell into uncomfortable sleep on seats near the boarding gate with about 90 minutes to go.
Ladies & Gentlemen, this is not your captain speaking
An announcement woke us up before my alarm could: “… AirAsia to Kota Kinabalu has now been retimed to 1am…”. Sunburned, tired, in need of sleep and stewing turned to raging frustration. “I can’t take it anymore, I have to sleep”, I told the Journo, “let’s go to the transit hotel”.
Expensive, this decision, but so worth it. We got nearly 2 hours of solid sleep cuddled under warm blankets on a comfortable bed. Until the phone rang, again, beating my alarm. Dazed and confused I found the phone only to hear the lady from the check-in desk say “Sir, your flight was brought forward to 12.30am. You have 10 minutes to get to the gate. Hurry”.
As if in one motion, we jumped straight out of bed and opened the door while picking up our stuff. I ran to the gate a good 500m aways and stalled for time as the Journo caught up. The security staff looked like they were packing up already, but luckily we made it through. Mere minutes after we boarded they closed the door and we were off.
I couldn’t help but wonder how many people got left behind.
Home Sweet Home in Time for Dawn
As we touched down in KK the clock struck 3am and after I unpacked, did a forced load of washing (can’t let sweaty clothes dry, man), I eventually hit the pillows hard at 4am.
Not one to carry grudges for long, the AirAsia ordeal was forgotten soon after ranting about it to friends for a day or so.
Happy Ending
Last night, just as I was about to shut down for the night, this whole mis-adventure committed to the hardly-ever-accessed part of my memory, I got an email from AirAsia. Subject: Retrieve your OTG Gift Voucher.
With much curiosity I opened the email, checked its authenticity (phishing victim, me? Never.) and followed the instructions. Moments later I received another email with a claim-code for a voucher to the value of RM200 to be used on my next flight or on other AirAsia services.
OTG, as it turns out, stands for On-Time Guarantee.
Having never seen any literature about this before, I did a quick search and found this press release dated 23 October 2008, in which AirAsia announces that customers inconvenienced by a delay longer than 2 hours on an AirAsia flight, will be eligible for a RM200 voucher.
Bonus! With our next flight planned (but thankfully not booked yet), this voucher will be a mighty handy discount and a pleasant offset against those expensive 2-hours of sleep I bought in Singapore.
And although I had forgiven AirAsia for that hideous delay already, this vouchers goes an infinite distance towards establishing goodwill and restoring confidence in Asia’s favourite airline and proving why they are the top dog. If only other companies demonstrated their commitment to their customers in such ways.
Good work, AirAsia.
Hey, this is good info! Thanks for sharing