As I was scouting through, I spotted a few airports listed on Spicejet website, which were unusual
Manila, capital of Philippines is one of them.
Seoul (ICN)
Amsterdam
MED (Saudi Arabia)
Mattala (Srilanka)
BGY Italy
Kuwait
Moscow
ZAG (Croatia)
Georgia
Spicejet's London plans were known. Spicejet hoping to become preferred long haul low cost carrier..
Obviously spicejet isn't flying international at present and even before covid their international flights were limited to Colombo, Dhaka and few nearby destinations. I thought these may be their code share plans- but by that logic they can sell to almost any airport in the world. May be it is their expansion plans which were work in progress before covid restrictions kicked in.
Let us hope covid pains ease soon and Spicejet is able to resume their international flights soon.
Spicejet has announced a sale, on for next few days (30th June) for travel from Aug 2021, valid all the way till March 2022.
While the sale banner advertises lowest fare of 999, I found a fare 2 Rs cheaper. Fare for Chennai - BLR was 997! Of course 350 Rs convenience fee extra and you will need more money to reach airport or airport to city...
Other fares: BLR-Goa: 1700 Rs, Chennai-Delhi: 2200 Rs. Not super tempting but lower than what we have seen in past 1 year. If you are in a mood to travel, check. But be prepared for wave 3 impact and another round of lockdown and cancellation.
Guwahati Silchar is 3500 Rs though- there's no competition on this sector to spicejet!
Low fares are back in Indian domestic aviation market. For travel in Aug and Sep 2021, Indigo has some discounted fares
#
Route
One way fare (+ 300Rs extra)
1
Chennai- Hyd
1161
2
Guwahati-Kolkata
1177
3
Delhi-Jaipur
1500
4
Chennai-Mumbai
1700
5
Blr-Goa
1700
There is 300 Rs convenience fee as well.
Spicejet, AirAsia India and GoAir are trying to match Indigo price as well.
Does it interest you to buy? You think corona will be gone during Aug-Sep and we can plan some leisure travel? What happens if Wave 3 kicks in and flights are grounded or leisure travel is restricted again?
What are the indicators that hint at recovery of global air travel? At what stage it is safe to start planning next international trip? Is the situation likely to get any better soon? Here are some thoughts.
Sign 01: Relaxed entry criteria for vaccinated tourists: Many countries are opening their borders. If you are vaccinated, you get exemption from test or quarantine rules. This is a good sign. If within next 3-6 months if you can complete your vaccination, covid cases world wide come down to manageable levels and more countries relax their rules for international travelers, that would be the first good hint at recovery.
Sign 02: Resumption of international air travel: Air travel in India is now limited. Only domestic flights with RT-PCR tests and few international flights based on air bubble arrangements. DGCA has banned all scheduled international flights till end of June and may continue for some more time. For tourism related travel, conventional air travel should resume (without traveler having to explain the compulsion why it is essential to travel). That would be the second sign of recovery.
Sign 03: Visa services resuming: Indians need tourist visa for most countries. Resumption of Visa related services is a must have sign to restore normalcy.
Sign 04: Ability to have an alternate option: If an airline cancels its flight do you have another airline operating? If a country bans your entry do you have a plan B? If you are quarantined can you work from remote location for couple of weeks? Post covid tourists need to consider multiple scenarios and have a plan B in place so that disruption is minimum.
Sign 05: Pricing: Tourists don't have a compulsion to fly to a destination. If tickets are too expensive they will skip. It will be essential for air ticket prices to come down to sensible levels before tourists start planning. Current rate of 1 lakh Rs to USA one way or various such rates need to come down by at least 50% for leisure travel to be affordable and viable. Airlines will reduce prices once demand improves, more airlines start operating and competition kicks in.
Do you agree? What do you consider a good sign that now is the good time to plan an international leisure trip?
Air Asia India customers are in a deep mess but they don't realize it yet as international flights are currently suspended in India (except few flights with air bubble agreements)
Till 2020, Air Asia was one entity for Indian consumers- though Air Asia India existed and operating domestic flights (I5), it was one website- airasia.com that handled everything. I could book a BLR- Delhi domestic flight or BLR-KUL international flight using one website. If we had loyalty points pending (due to say cancelled flights) we could have used it to book any other flights.
Air Asia India was fully guided from Malaysia- in terms of aircraft selection, destinations, pricing and so on. Customers got a uniform experience whether it is domestic or international flight. But as you know, a lot happened in 2020
1. Covid 19 struck and airlines around the world were affected, including AirAsia
2. While many airlines around the world got Govt support to sustain, AirAsia didn't get any
3. Air Asia India was already in loss and situation aggravated, resulting in Air Asia parent company selling its controlling stake to India partner-Tata Group, causing separation of Air Asia India from Air Asia Berhad (Malaysian Parent company)
#3 above is the focus of this article as it has caused a massive trouble for Air Asia's India customers. Current problems are as below.
But AirAsia Malayasia sold its stake in Air Asia India to Tata Group. Tony Fernandes still holds a minority stake but for all practical purpose, AIr Asia India is now a separate entity from Air Asia Barhad. For Indian customers, this means following problems
1. New Website: Air Asia India has formed a new website: https://www.airasia.co.in/homeairasia.in, which has no user login, your earlier air asia login credentials are no longer relevant. They will probably enhance the site a bit but you'll have to begin from scratch.
2. No access to AirAsia.com. Sad part is we can't even access earlier airasia.com. They have set a redirection rule so opening AirAsia's international website is tricky affair. You might still manage to open it through some circus but there also changes have been made to make it impossible to track your credit shell points.
3. Lost credit points: If you had some Air Asia international tickets from 2020 (cancelled due to Pandemic) refunded via credit shells, Air Asia India will not honor them. There is no way to view them now- AirAsia has tweaked the website so that users can't see part booking details or credit shell details. No option to pay by credit shell during new booking, which is anyway handled by another site- kiwi.com
This means all your credit shell points are at a risk of being written off.
4. International flights uncertain: AirAsia had some of the cheapest international flight tickets to Asia and Australian destinations from India. I have flows to Macau, Vietnam, Gold Coast, Auckland, Melbourne, Bali, Manila, Palawan, Yangon and many other destinations on cheap AirAsia flight. With the airline in crisis and relationship with India in bad shape, not clear if Air Asia will resume its India flights to KUL and DMK once Corona restrictions are lifted. If not, Indians will miss a super cheap airline.
As a customer what can we do?
Air Asia group itself is in a mess. It is operating some domestic flights inside Malaysia. Not much international flights are operating at this moment, both because of restrictions put in by respective countries and also air asia's own financial struggles. There are many examples of Airlines going burst and customers having to write off the money paid for tickets on now cancelled flights. Jet Airways, Kingfisher are some live examples.
Below is what I found
Air Asia India washed off its hands outright, asked me to tweet to AirAsia Malaysia
Sent a tweet to AVA, no reply [tweet link here]. You can try your luck contacting the airline on Social Media but don't think they care.
Sent an email to the stated email ID, no reply. I am currently staring at a loss of about 40-50k INR in various tickets that had to be cancelled due to covid. My cancelled tickets include Vizag-Melbourne 5500 Rs ticket, Perth-Chennai 10k ticket, AMD-KUL 502 Rs ticket, few tickets to Cambodia, Laos etc. Had booked them long before Covid crisis kicked in. While I stare at the loss, I am also thankful to AirAsia for all the cheap flights I had in the past- Chennai-Auckland return for 24k, Chennai Australia return for 20k, Chennai-Brunei return for 8k, Chennai-Japan return for 16k and so on. Hope those golden days of travel return soon.
In this video (April 2021), Air Asia boss Tony Fernandes says they are yet to refund about 450000 customers and will do as soon as they can. While it is a bit reassuring, I won't trust it 100%. During a crisis no leader will be honest to admit "Our ship is sinking, I am escaping with my personal wealth, you are on your own". Leaders try to buy time, win confidence and try for recovery. So we can be optimistic but be prepared for worst.
So below are the options I can think of, for previous Air Asia customers.
1. Write to support, ask for refund.
Try your luck writing to Air Asia Malaysia support asking for refund against your credit shell. Not sure if they will entertain but you may get lucky. Put pressure on social media.
2. Hope for recovery
May be another 3 months international flights open up and if you manage to get vaccinated by them, many countries might accept you as tourist. If you have unused credit shell and airline facilitates using them, you might be able to book a few trips.
3. Legal action: Team up with other affected customers and initiate legal action- will be a long shot given parent company is in Malaysia, but Airline might agree to refund fearing negative publicity.
For a hope of successful refund, it is essential covid crisis ends soon, travel resumes and airlines survive and revive soon. airas
4. Write off and move on: If the amount involved is too small for you to fight for it, write it off and move on. Covid was not AirAsia's fault and long legal battle is not guaranteed to give any refunds. Focus on something else and earn more than what you have lost.
This is what AirAsia should do to give comfort to customers:
1. Give assurance that credit shells are still valid- extend validity and give assurance that they can be used in any air asia group flights including Air Asia India
2. If above is not possible, assure cash refund. We understand airline is in crisis and needs time but an assurance and timeline will go a long way.
3. Make AirAsia.com accessible to India customers to see their credit shells or book a flight on AirAsia's international network
4. Give customers an option to book directly on AirAsia.com instead of redirecting them to use Kiwi.com site which doesn't accept credit shells.
AirAsia was flying to lots of destinations in India- Chennai, Kochi, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Kolkata, Vizag, Hyderabad and so on. They used to run frequent sales so I am sure tens of thousands of Indian customers would have booked tickets worth hundreds of crores which are now held up with airline with no refund and no sight of flights operating. Indian consumers probably haven't realized their loss as international flights haven't resumed yet. Time for airline to prepare well before it blows into PR disaster and crisis.
