| July
2005
Four low(er) priced airlines
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In the last 12 months, I have flown on the 3 new airlines operating out of
Singapore as well as on Air Asia. This is not a comparison -- I haven't
flown often enough on them to tell you if my experience is typical or not
-- but some thoughts that I have about this emerging
industry.
The airlines I am referring to are Valuair, an independent mid-price airline operating out of Singapore, Tiger Airways, the budget offshoot of Singapore Airlines, Jetstar Asia, the Asian budget offshoot of Qantas (based in Singapore) and Air Asia. The latter has two arms - Malaysian Air Asia and Thai Air Asia. I have flown domestic flights on both. Online booking Efficient, reliable online booking is essential for keeping costs down. I have managed to book online without difficulty on all airlines except Tiger Airways. The portals of Valuair and Jetstar Asia were both simple to understand, to navigate and were very responsive to inputs. But as they grow, they're going to have to deal with increasing problems of language. Valuair only has an English website even though as of the time of writing, they fly to Jakarta and Hong Kong. Jetstar Asia has Chinese and Thai versions of its website to serve its Taipei and Bangkok destinations. Air Asia is furthest ahead in providing language choice, but it isn't done well. Its website uses country flags to indicate language. But country flags can mean different things to different people. For example, when I wanted to to fly Bangkok-Phuket, a domestic Thai route, I clicked the Thai flag, since I knew that that route was operated by Thai Air Asia. What I got was a Thai-language website, leaving me stumped as to how I might get the English version of Thai Air Asia. It took a while for me to discover that I should have clicked the Singapore or Malaysian flags to get English, and yes, I could purchase a ticket for a Thai domestic route under the page marked with a Singapore flag. This is not intuitive and got the passenger off to a bad start. If I had not been persistent, I might have gone to another airline. Air Asia's opening page should not have used country flags to represent language choices. It should simply have said, "Please choose your language". Except for that hiccup, booking online for Air Asia proceeded smoothly. Likewise, on an earlier occasion, when I purchased a ticket online for a Johore-Kuala Lumpur flight, it went smoothly too. My one experience trying to book online for Tiger Airways wasn't good. I don't think it was typical, so I'm not trying to say they don't compare well with the rest. Unfortunately, people do recall the fiasco when they first launched their website. That was in September 2004. They overpublicised their fantastic opening discounts and an unprecedented number of people tried to get online the day the website was launched. It promptly crashed and caused thousands of people great frustration. Hence Tiger Airways need to work harder to overcome that legacy. Yet, when I tried booking Tiger Airways earlier this year, months after that episode, I thought their website was a joke. It clearly had not been tested for different browsers, or different font size settings, so here and there the words would be obscured by a graphic, or would slide under an adjoining column (it's improved since). Anyway, by trial and error, I figured it out and the online booking appeared to proceed smoothly. However, the final confirmation never came through and I had to call the telephone hotline to set things in order. Fortunately, I was not much inconvenienced by the answering machine, and was attended to almost immediately by a pleasant guy who assured me, by reference to the computer in front of him, that the booking and payment had been accepted. But honestly, this is not the way it's supposed to work. I have not flown on Tiger since that first occasion. I'm sure many others have had no problems with Tiger's online booking system, but that's what I experienced. Pricing I'm not referring to prices, but pricing. Valuair uses a different pricing philosophy from the rest. They have basically two tiers: Flexi Fare which allows you to amend the dates and a Saver Fare, which doesn't. I think there is some merit in this simple system. Personally I like the comfort of knowing that what I'm paying is the price most others are paying. It feels fair. However, I see a significant number of package tourists from China on Valuair flights, and I'll bet that the tour agents have negotiated discounts for their groups. But, that's fine too, it's a fact of life the world over that if you're prepared to put up with being shepherded around, you get good deals. The other airlines apply a far more tactical approach to pricing. They certainly exploit the real-time capabilities of information technology, and essentially, each time you try to book online, the computer gives you an individualised quote. depending on the circumstances, it may be a fantastic price, or it may not. We can't fault the airlines for trying to maximise their margins, but this pricing philosophy makes it very difficult for the consumer to know whether he is getting the best price or not unless he shops around a fair bit. And even then, the price for the same flight may potentially be halved a week later. Valuair pitches itself as a mid-priced airline, and may not want to go into price wars all the time. Fair enough, but this means it has to work hard at delivering a service quality and comfort level that is noticeably better than the other airlines discussed here, who have no qualms about calling themselves budget airlines. It's a bit early to say if consumers have been able to see and appreciate the difference. Boarding One way of controlling costs, it is said, is to avoid the use of aerobridges. At airports with high traffic, aircraft parking charges are lower for remote bays. However, from a consumer's point of view, bussing (and having to climb up the stairs to the aircraft) is seen as inconvenient. If Singapore's budget terminal is designed such that the aircraft can park as close as possible to the building such that passengers can walk to the plane, then that would be better than having to be crammed into a bus. However, one still has to climb the stairs to board, though if that means those who insist on lugging aboard bulky, heavy carry-on bags have to huff and puff up steep steps, well, I think I will find some selfish glee in that. Personally, I think bringing on board big suitcases is rather inconsiderate to other passengers. The other consideration in boarding is whether seats are pre-assigned. Air Asia and Tiger Airways apply a free-seating philosophy while Jetstar Asia and Valuair assign seats. Personally, I much prefer assigned seats. The kiasu mentality of Singaporeans (and perhaps Hongkongers too) is such that people can get pretty pushy and inconsiderate if seats aren't assigned. Delays With small samples - in this case, just my personal experience flying low-fare airlines about 11 or 12 return trips in the last 12 months (i.e. 22 - 24 flights), you can get freak results. One possible freak result is that on both occasions that I used Air Asia, one leg of the flight was delayed. But as I will explain below, delays may be the price one has to pay for flying low-fare, and it probably affects all these airlines, not just Air Asia. The worse of my two experiences was the Bangkok-Phuket flight, when my flight FD 3018 on 2 July 2005 was delayed from 21.10h to 22.15h. I looked at my watch when we finally boarded and it was 22.25h. We didn't take off until another 15 minutes after that. That same evening, Air Asia had another flight leaving Bangkok: FD 3346 bound for Chiangmai. The handwritten sign put up at the check-in counter told passengers that it was delayed from the scheduled 19.35h to 23.10h. I guess this is to be expected when these airlines have to work their equipment hard. These planes have to fly a number of sectors a day scheduled very tightly, hence the slightest hiccup anytime can have a cascading effect on timings for the rest of the day. It may be that at the moment, Air Asia suffers the most from this problem because it operates the largest number of flights. The other three airlines are hurting from a lack of destinations, and so at this stage of their growth, they probably do not schedule their flights as closely as Air Asia. Seat pitch
The difference is very noticeable. The moment you put yourself into a seat of 29-inch pitch, you feel as if the seat in front of you is coming against your face. If you're any taller than me (and most people are) you'll be wondering when your knees will be crushed. Airlines with 29-inch pitch will naturally permit only the slightest reclining of the seats, so all practical purposes, you'll be sitting upright through the flight. Meals Only Valuair provided free meals on the Singapore-Bangkok sector. But I kind of wish they didn't. It was a in a carton box that said "It's feeding time!", which, while it was meant to be in line with its casual, chatty atmosphere, only suggested to passengers that they were in a zoo. Invariably, it would be either fried rice or fried noodles, with almost no toppings. In other words, it was carbohydrate, carbohydrate and oil. The other airlines on the same sector sold cup noodles and prepacked sandwiches. They were overpriced and unappealing. So were the canned drinks. Money Twice, I didn't have a bottle of water with me on board, so I found I had to buy a drink. On the occasion when I was on Valuair, they said a can of Coke was $2 (Singapore dollars). The devil in me decided to test them. "How much in baht?" That simple question triggered a flurry of activity, as the shocking question was passed from one stewardess to another. "Do you even accept baht?" was my follow-up question even before they had figured out what to do with the first. This only added to the rising sense of panic. Without waiting for an answer, I said, "don't you think you should be accepting baht, you should be conversant with it, since you're flying the Singapore-Bangkok sector?" Finally, the answer came back. "Yes, we accept baht, but we won't be able to make change in baht, though. It's fifty baht per can." Which made the canned drink even more expensive in baht than the Singapore dollar. Provided you had exact change. How would Thai customers feel on board Valuair? It's bad enough that the stewardesses speak Singlish, which only Singaporeans understand (I doubt if any of them speak Thai), it's a real inconvenience if they can't show equal acceptance of the Thai currency on board. This suggests a blind spot in the Valuair management to the potential of the Thai market, which can't augur well for their future. The same test was carried out on Jetstar Asia a few months later. Again the steward had no immediate answer to my question about the price of his drinks in Thai baht. Like on Valuair, he had to go back to the galley to ask his supervisor. He came back with an exchange rate of 26 baht to a dollar, which made Jetstar's drink 52 baht a can. Once again, it was more expensive in baht than in the Singapore dollar; once again, there's a blind spot about serving the Thai market. Stewards Thai Air Asia and Jetstar Asia had good-looking stewards, some of whom looked delightfully gay. Valuair and Tiger Airways had only female cabin crew. However friendly they were, they were not eye-candy. * * * * * Malaysian Air Asia is profitable, but just a few months earlier, it issued a profit warning to the investing market. I don't know what the financial position of Thai Air Asia is like. Consolidation is likely, as is learning
from experience and steady operational improvement. Please bear in mind
that the picture of these airlines that I have provided here is just a
snapshot in time. Things change. © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes None Addenda
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Valuair had the best seat pitch. From a
website comparing various airlines' seat pitches, I found that the figure
for Valuair was 32 inches (81.3 cm), which was similar to Singapore
Airlines' economy class. The other low-fare airlines I tried looked to me
to be 29 inches (the site hadn't been updated for the other low-fare
carriers when I checked).
