AirAsia world's best low-cost airline for 9th consecutive year.

[waarmstrong]

And I did.

 

[William King]

I'm currently searching for cheap flights Jakarta-Bali from 3-9 July. The cheapest I can find, at a reasonable departure time AM, is Lion Air at between Rp 550-700,000.
Garuda would cost over twice as much.
Any help is appreciated.

Pay for Garuda. Less than $200 is a good price

 

[William King]

Actually, your post does denigrate the "nice" recounting of the observations of a passenger.

Not at all.

Its useful to know, since her world experience of airline maintainence is going to be somewhat limited and gives us insight into the validity of her comment.

Atechnical problem like this could happen on any plane and Air Asia's cheaper flights are not to blame. The aircraft was checked thoroughly before departure like all planes are and was regulated by the same air safety organisations.People should not be criticising Air Asia formissing anything - technical problems happenall the time, even on more expensive flights.We didn't pay less for a technical problem, we paid less for no electronic devices, no meals and less leg room. Air Asia is an amazing company and i have flown with them many times before, always with great service and perfect take off and landing.

 

[Davita]

Pay for Garuda. Less than $200 is a good price

We decided to return from Jakarta to Bali sometime Saturday morning (8July) as all our household staff have returned to work. We have no other schedule to meet. There are two passengers flying.

Garuda one way at 11:35 am was Rp1.951,100 each or US$145.91 (20k)
Lion Air one way at 11:25 am was Rp 572,000 each or US$ 42.78 (20k)
I chose Lion Air.

 

[fastpitch17]

We decided to return from Jakarta to Bali sometime Saturday morning (8July) as all our household staff have returned to work. We have no other schedule to meet. There are two passengers flying.

Garuda one way at 11:35 am was Rp1.951,100 each or US$145.91 (20k)
Lion Air one way at 11:25 am was Rp 572,000 each or US$ 42.78 (20k)
I chose Lion Air.

We pretty much fly Garuda when we fly since we always have check in baggage (for the shopper) and I hate to have to figure in baggage this way and that way. Over 60 you get a discount on Garuda and that may or may not apply to other airlines. We also get a meal of some kind. Even our 35 minute flight from BL to Jakarta has a sandwich, snack, and bottle of water. One thing I never do if looking at other airlines is include Lion Air in the search. One for me that I avoid completely. I think if they said, here, take a free flight, I would refuse.

 

[Anglian]

Bit of thread drift here, I had a nice email this morning thanking me for using Garuda and the Cabin staff have been voted 4th best airline cabin staffJust saying

 

[William King]

One thing I never do if looking at other airlines is include Lion Air in the search. One for me that I avoid completely.

Agreed. Me too. Early on here every time I tried using Lying Air I discovered that they would be late, or cancelled.

For me, being treated like complete shit, wasting anywhere from 6-18 hours at an airport, without luggage, food, drinks is not worth the $102 that Davita thinks he has saved. (Would I work for $8 an hour? So why would I waste 10+ hours of my own time?)

Of the low cost air lines, the only one I will use is Air Asia.

 

[Anglian]

I had a phone call a while back offered a position as Quality manager for Lion Air, I asked the chap if he was joking, what Quality

 

[dafluff]

We decided to return from Jakarta to Bali sometime Saturday morning (8July) as all our household staff have returned to work. We have no other schedule to meet. There are two passengers flying.

Garuda one way at 11:35 am was Rp1.951,100 each or US$145.91 (20k)
Lion Air one way at 11:25 am was Rp 572,000 each or US$ 42.78 (20k)
I chose Lion Air.

Well, with you on board, at least you can be sure there are 2 pilots in the airplane.

 

[Anglian]

Well, with you on board, at least you can be sure there are 2 pilots in the airplane.

You mean one pilot

 

[Davita]

Well, with you on board, at least you can be sure there are 2 pilots in the airplane.

I wouldn't get too confident on that score my friend. Yours truly lost his flying licence after retiring in 1990 and have hardly ever been on a flight-deck since. You need to fly some hours on type every few month to maintain the licence...who's gonna lend me a B747 for a trip around the block every so often.....

I also had my UK driver's licence revoked when turning 70 and just had my Canadian DL revoked a month ago on turning 80.
I still have a Sim A & C but have never driven a car in Indonesia and a motorbike anywhere since 1957, when I fell asleep on one and ended in a field, returning to an RAF Base at 2 am.
Good news is I can still captain a pleasure yacht as that licence doesn't have any expiry...so if you can get your hands on a 50-80 foot twin diesel yacht......I can be your captain.

 

[waarmstrong]

Not at all.

Its useful to know, since her world experience of airline maintainence is going to be somewhat limited and gives us insight into the validity of her comment.

I suppose it's possible there is a correlation between age and experience in airline maintenance, but forgive me if I doubt that a 20, or 30 or 40 year old passenger is any more savvy about such details than the passenger sharing her experience about the performance of the crew. At least she is probably able to spell maintenance.

 

[Davita]

Agreed. Me too. Early on here every time I tried using Lying Air I discovered that they would be late, or cancelled.

For me, being treated like complete shit, wasting anywhere from 6-18 hours at an airport, without luggage, food, drinks is not worth the $102 that Davita thinks he has saved. (Would I work for $8 an hour? So why would I waste 10+ hours of my own time?)

Of the low cost air lines, the only one I will use is Air Asia.

I got scared by the above news so checked my (tomorrow) flight history in the last week...
It arrived twice early...by 7 mins and 2 mins and 4 times late by 6 mins, 5 mins, 4 mins and 2 mins.
Of course, knowing my luck, I'll probably be back here sometime tomorrow night saying how pissed I am with Lying Air....

 

[Asun]

I got scared by the above news so checked my (tomorrow) flight history in the last week...
It arrived twice early...by 7 mins and 2 mins and 4 times late by 6 mins, 5 mins, 4 mins and 2 mins.
Of course, knowing my luck, I'll probably be back here sometime tomorrow night saying how pissed I am with Lying Air....

The first flight of the day is generally on time. Then Lion air flights get progressively late as the day wears on. At the end of the day, you'll be lucky if it's only delayed for 1 hour.

 

[Davita]

The first flight of the day is generally on time. Then Lion air flights get progressively late as the day wears on. At the end of the day, you'll be lucky if it's only delayed for 1 hour.

You're right and why we always select the earliest, but cheapest flight available. You can always get cheap seats in the evening but, as you said, it can be very, very late. But not only Lion...Air Asia does exactly the same....we were an hour late out of Bali on Air Asia, a couple of weeks ago, for that very reason.

btw I'm having trouble with Lying Air already they cannot check us in as their system is down...grrr!

 

[dafluff]

I wouldn't get too confident on that score my friend. Yours truly lost his flying licence after retiring in 1990 and have hardly ever been on a flight-deck since. You need to fly some hours on type every few month to maintain the licence...who's gonna lend me a B747 for a trip around the block every so often.....

I also had my UK driver's licence revoked when turning 70 and just had my Canadian DL revoked a month ago on turning 80.
I still have a Sim A & C but have never driven a car in Indonesia and a motorbike anywhere since 1957, when I fell asleep on one and ended in a field, returning to an RAF Base at 2 am.
Good news is I can still captain a pleasure yacht as that licence doesn't have any expiry...so if you can get your hands on a 50-80 foot twin diesel yacht......I can be your captain.

If someone had a gun to my head and made me choose between an Indian* Lion Air P2F FO (are they still not allowed to touch the controls below 5000ft? ) and an 80 year old ex-RAF, ex-BA 747 captain as my pilot, I'd like to think my choice is easy. Naturally without a gun to my head I would choose neither....

*Not denigrating people of Indian nationality. This is a dig at the Indian DGCA who is notorious for "poor" record keeping, and giving away pilot licenses to hugely under-qualified people.
Here is an interesting story about Indian pilots: http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/news/...ified-to-fly-after-just-35-minutes-in-the-air

 

[Davita]

Frightening story dafluff but I would hope the Indonesian Aviation Authority, who are tasked with issuing the RI licence to work for an Indonesian registered airline, would have more discretion about issuing such licence...particularly to a foreigner. I said 'Hope!'...

btw.... If I were to put my hands on the control of an airliner now it would probably shake more than that Air Asia flight out of Perth recently........might be OK using auto-land tho'.
Sadly, there aren't any Cat3C (auto-land) airports in Indonesia....need to divert to Singapore yeaahh!:lol:

 

[Davita]

Re: my post #44....
Took Grab from my place near Senayan (Rp75,000 + toll) to Soekerno-Hatta this morning in a record for us (half-hour).
Checked in with Lion Air...had a problem as web check-in (not working) had closed our selected seats...so they gave us alternative front row seats with legroom to the bulkhead. Comfortable flight with a small bottle of water (Rp15,000)....Landed Bali14 mins early. Cost of flight for two....Rp1.144,000.

Just checked the alternative Garuda flight departing JKT .....Landed Bali 23 mins late. Cost of flight for two....Rp3.902,000....but I'll bet the tea/sandwich must have been super!

 

[Saudade]

We just came back from holidays in Philippines and I have to say that at the beginning I was scare about to fly with Cebu Pacific, the fact is, to talk or to travel with low cost sometimes already scares me, but I was so surprise how good Cebu Pacific is, we made 7 flights in total and all of them on time and very professional, so far and base on my own experience I can only talk great things about Cebu Pacific.
I only had a quite stressful problem, trying to buy tickets from their website and for more than 24 hours, almost two days I couldn´t open the website, I was not sure if it was a problem on the website or the internet conexion was so bad on the island and slow that I was not able to open the website, finally before to get mad I had to ask a friend from Europe to buy the tickets for us 3 am in the morning!! just two days before to travel, after that somebody told me that they opened some promo flights around that day on 30th June so that it could be as well the reason, I am not sure.
I will flight Cebu again without any doubts.
This is out of topic totally but I was surprise how poor Philippines is, I think they are more poor than Indonesia isn´t it?
We saw amazing islands and amazing things and one of the things I love the most it was Philippines people, they are so so familiar and friendly and very genuine people, to travel around is quite relax and can trust them on prices, nobody go after you trying to get your pesos or cheat you, amazing people!
Prices can be similar to Indonesia or even cheaper if you go locally.

 

[rabbit_39]

I've not had any exceptional experience with Garuda vs any of the low cost airlines. Nicer seats, sure. You get a box lunch/dinner, sure. But is it worth additional 50% to 200% (or more) in cost? Naaahhh....

If you call Garuda's call center to change your ticket, you can no longer check in online. The lounges are just so-so even if you fly business class. And I have had a call center person admit that the Garuda system is outdated and quite primitive with a lot of manual processes...