Saturday, March 21, 2009

Low cost airlines, REALLY?

Hi, it has been a while.
I would like to relate to you my experience with one of the low cost carrier in the country.
I was taking this flight from Kuala Lumpur to Langkawi. The flight was scheduled to fly at early morning. Two hours prior to the departure I checlked in for the flight.
At that early morning, the situation in the waiting / departure hall has been filed by long queue. A new phenomenon in this country whereby you see people diligently queing. What a relief for seeing the developed nation culture in the making.
Upon clearance for boarding, the door was opened and to my surprise the queue changed into a race. Back to the undeveloped nation attitude. Again chasing for KERUSI.
Upon take off, I notices why the rush in boarding. People were chasing for forward row of seats. The aircraft was half empty and only seats forward of the aircraft wing were filed up. Come to think of it no reason for rushing, even if it is full.
The cabin crew go around offering meals and goods for sale. Like the conventional airline except it is usually done after free meals service. Kind of taking a train ride in Indonesia, at very stop sellers rushing through to offer everything for sale from food to goods etc. Except this time it is more expensive even if compared to tourist price in the Indonisian train scenario.
Do you think it is fare for this company., very commercial but claiming to be low cost, put these 100 passengers or so in its aircraft cabin, take it off and stabilised at 25,000 feet in the air, and start forcing them to buy things at 4 to 5 times it normal price? The authority controlled disappeared. Or they have given their consents?
Where is the passenger's right? By flying so claimed low cost, they lose their right to have access to food and goods at the reasonable price?

About one hour later, conventional airline usually took 45 minutes, the aircraft descended at a very fast rate comparatively. It was a scary experience when the aircraft is actually diving nose down due to the front heavy aircraft. It went on until actually touched down. No sign of landing flare that I used to observed on conventional airline. I was made to understand such phenomenon is not safe due to aircraft structural limitation. Again by flying so called low cost, the passengers were deprived the right to safe flight?

I keep on calling the so called low cost airline, why? Because from my experience it is not really low cost rather just a lower cost airlines.

What do we do?

1 comment:

  1. i think the goverment should give the subsidiary for the Malaysian to take MAS because a lot of money has been used to bail out MAS. MAS is our national carrier, why only certain people can take it because of the high price? - nabil07@yahoo.com

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