As I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, AirAsia is planning on launching flights to the U.S. starting later this year, which represents their first service to the U.S. The airline just recently got permission from the FAA to fly to the U.S, and they’re taking advantage of that pretty quickly.
AirAsia is one of Asia’s largest low cost carriers, and they’re known for their incredibly low fares.
Well, AirAsia’s new flight between Kuala Lumpur and Honolulu is now on sale, and they have some incredible introductory fares.
AirAsia will begin flying to the U.S. as of June 28, 2017, with the following schedule:
Kuala Lumpur to Osaka departing 2:00PM arriving 9:25PM
Osaka to Honolulu departing 11:25PM arriving 12:30PM
Honolulu to Osaka departing 4:00PM arriving 8:25PM (+1 day)
Osaka to Kuala Lumpur departing 10:00PM arriving 4:00AM (+1 day)
This flight will be operated by an A330, featuring 377 seats, including 12 premium seats and 365 economy seats.
To celebrate the new route, AirAsia has some insanely low fares. You can fly between Honolulu and Osaka starting at just $99 one-way. Roundtrip tickets start at ~$260, including all taxes and fees.
If you’re looking to travel between Honolulu and Kuala Lumpur, fares are a bit more. You can fly roundtrip for ~$350, which is incredible for 18 hours of travel in each direction.
I’m sort of intrigued by AirAsia’s premium flatbed product. They have just 12 of these angled flat seats on their A330s, and they come with a free pillow and blanket, a seat assignment, and complimentary meals and drinks.
Here’s a video about the product, starring David Foster (which is a hilarious endorsement, given that he primarily flies private):
So while AirAsia’s premium product isn’t as good as business class on most airlines, it certainly seems like a very good value. Just ~$700 one-way for such a product is a price that’s tough to beat. I’d like to review the product at some point.
Anyone plan on taking advantage of AirAsia’s excellent fares between the U.S. and Japan/Malaysia?
I live in Hawaii and am grateful that you posted this. Thank you from your fans on the rock!
Lol Honolulu cant really be considered the "US." A ticket from mainland to Hawaii alone costs over $500 in economy! For those that live in Hawaii this might be good but otherwhise it doesnt make much of a difference if you fly from LAX-Hawaii-then Asia considering the costs to get to Hawaii in the first place.
@Reinaldo Lopez, we are looking for a place in Hawaii to rent and go on vacation. We can watch your place and also trade our townhouse in California for yours in Hawaii for a couple of weeks as well.
You can email me if you like. [email protected]
@Rick, I am not sure where you are finding $700 dollar roundtrip fares with no restrictions on SQ out of US.
We had 6 months...
@Reinaldo Lopez, we are looking for a place in Hawaii to rent and go on vacation. We can watch your place and also trade our townhouse in California for yours in Hawaii for a couple of weeks as well.
You can email me if you like. [email protected]
@Rick, I am not sure where you are finding $700 dollar roundtrip fares with no restrictions on SQ out of US.
We had 6 months last year before we booked our one way from LAX to BKK. We paid over $600 for a one way flight on a consolidator's website Exporetrip as it was much higher on SQ's website.
I have a $600 dollar AA voucher that I am trying to us now and I need to buy a one way to Asia. The cheapest thing to PVG on AA is over $900 dollars in May, SQ is around $600 average for a one way, when they run their specials, the min for southeast Asia is $599 with so many rules and restriction. I had a health emergency last year before my SQ flight and because I had not taken insurance I would have lost the entire value of the ticket and SQ was unable to change our itinerary. I ended up flying with a major healthy issue.
Not a very good company when you have problems. The only good thing about SQ is the service on board. They lost our luggage going to Thailand and still have not gotten anything back from Singapore Airlines, not even an email or an apology.
I had a first class ticket on SQ with broken seats and cancellations and another business class trip with a last minute cancellation out of Istanbul and never got a penny or one single mile from SQ. They are not good with customer relations. They need to learn how to treat their customers. I will not book a Singapore Airlines flight again, no matter what.
I had other issues with SQ, rude agents in BKK Airport, their agents not letting me use Business class lounge when I had a long transit from IST-SIN on my way to ICN, and several other issues and they do not like to take care of their customers and they simply do not care!
I am not sure what is this big hype to fly on SQ.
Air Asia ? No thanks I'll pass. The newest Air Crash Investigation episode that came out this week was about an Air Asia crash . The pilots did not handle the situation well.
I've flown AirAsia X in Premium Flatbed and it's a nice seat. Good to sleep despite "angle" - it's not as steep as the old LH "slide" and I slept well on it. I reviewed it on my blog... Tickets on the KUL-Australia routes are often much cheaper than this, so I would hold off on buying this route a little. You can buy upgrades for a lot less than this, too!
Also, The...
I've flown AirAsia X in Premium Flatbed and it's a nice seat. Good to sleep despite "angle" - it's not as steep as the old LH "slide" and I slept well on it. I reviewed it on my blog... Tickets on the KUL-Australia routes are often much cheaper than this, so I would hold off on buying this route a little. You can buy upgrades for a lot less than this, too!
Also, The economy class is supremely uncomfortable on long flights - it's a thinly padded slimline seat with a 29in pitch that's tough to sit in for this long a flight, much worse than seats on mainline carriers. I've done it once and will not fly anything over 4h in that seat again...
@Ben, I disagree on fares from Asia being much more expensive. I guess, it depends on the country. Fares from the Philippines are consistently cheaper than from the US or Europe. Economy fares from $500 to US or EU and Business Class fares from $1,200 on premium carriers are something difficult to find the other way around. Kuala Lumpur is also pretty inexpensive - and you can always position yourself with a low-cost carrier to those places.
I've also seen Thai Airways starting to lower their prices late last year - with $2,000 roundtrip business class to Europe. SQ is still very expensive - their most recent "sales" fares were still between 50-100% more than the competition!
Actually sorry. Made a mistake. From SIN to the USA, Xiamen makes two stops. One stopover in XMN and the other in shenzhen SZX
@Rick I agree with you. SG and TG flights from Asia to the US are never cheap and seldom discounted. This Airasia X will give options although j hesitate to try economy on such long haul flights. Fortunately now there is Xiamen airlines who have been offering cheap airlines flight from SIN to USA. The unfortunate thing is that from SIN, Xiamen has to make two stopovers. One in Xiamen city and the other in Suzhou.
Excellent information as we are looking to fly in that direction from Honolulu into Asia. Just got to find someone to run my place out for at least half the month while gone. Thanks for the tips.
@Jim
Yes Jim don't be so lazy. Clickbait to you too
I'm super stocked with my Air Asia flights, especially the pricing. We did HKG-Chiang Mai round and while no lie flats, the few extra bucks for the mini upgrade was well worth first on and first row. Living in Hawaii, we will definitely use this new premium class to KUL to launch everywhere in Asia. Love staying in KUL, too. As reviewed here, 5 star for peanuts...we stayed Club level at the Mandarin Oriental and were wowed!
I just flew AirAsia CTU-KUL-HKT. US airlines have so much to learn! Not only was the price awesome but the logistics were perfect. Food is about $4 a meal, and two per person was filling for my 23-year old son.
One thing a lot of US-based readers may be unaware of is how much the cost of flying from Asia to the States has gone up in the past ten years, while the inverse is true for US-Asia routes. This has everything to do with the explosion of choices (particularly the Chinese ones) in the North American market, and also the intransigence of the 51% state owned legacy carries like TG and SIA who seem...
One thing a lot of US-based readers may be unaware of is how much the cost of flying from Asia to the States has gone up in the past ten years, while the inverse is true for US-Asia routes. This has everything to do with the explosion of choices (particularly the Chinese ones) in the North American market, and also the intransigence of the 51% state owned legacy carries like TG and SIA who seem to think that outlandish pricing from their own hubs is necessary to maintain their status as premium brands. One of the last places to get reasonable tickets on non-Chinese carriers is from Vietnam, although I suspect this won't last long because the same thing was true of Indonesia three years ago, and this now one of the WORST markets to buy a transpacific flight from (check out SQ's fares from Jakarta to the US for shits and giggles). On the other hand, you can get a one-year, unrestricted, fully-changeable return coach ticket on Singapore Airlines from the States for $700. This is why I'm going to say that even if this AirAsia option isn't the most exciting news I've ever read, it offers a low-cost way for non US-based flyers to "position" in the US to take advantage of of these much cheaper fares with less restrictive conditions, and that is definitely good news.
@Jim - we can also do without the ridiculous complaints. No international airline flies from the "collective" (what are you, a Borg?) United States to another country, not even Air Canada with its flock of RJs flying short distances with pre-clearance.
If you take the three seconds or so to skim the beginning of the article, presented on the home page for your convenience, it's perfectly clear that this is Air Asia's first route to...
@Jim - we can also do without the ridiculous complaints. No international airline flies from the "collective" (what are you, a Borg?) United States to another country, not even Air Canada with its flock of RJs flying short distances with pre-clearance.
If you take the three seconds or so to skim the beginning of the article, presented on the home page for your convenience, it's perfectly clear that this is Air Asia's first route to the US, and that the US destination is Honolulu. So if you aren't interested in a flight to Honolulu, you don't have to click through to the post,
And even if you're too lazy to actually read the bloody bit on the free homepage and click through, it's obvious three lines into the free post that this is a single initial route to Honolulu, so if this holds no interest for you, you can stop reading the free blog and have only spent a few seconds of your life reading the free content that you've received for free.
Yeesh...
We can do without the clickbait titles--it's really just flights from one United State, not the collective, and it happens to be one that's extremely expensive to get to from the other 49. Please change your title to be less misleading.
FREE HAWAII FROM THE AMERICANS.
I just flew KL-Colombo so didn't fully test the bed flatness but it is a really excellent seat for the fares they charge - including the best duvet and pillow I've ever had on a plane!
The service is minimal - just a small meal otherwise you can buy whatever else you need. The positive of this is that there is virtually no noise or movement in the cabin so very peaceful environment. Also there...
I just flew KL-Colombo so didn't fully test the bed flatness but it is a really excellent seat for the fares they charge - including the best duvet and pillow I've ever had on a plane!
The service is minimal - just a small meal otherwise you can buy whatever else you need. The positive of this is that there is virtually no noise or movement in the cabin so very peaceful environment. Also there is no entertainment but there is power so just bring your own loaded tablet
The Y product is another story altogether - ridiculously thin seat to squeeze in the extra seat vs other A330 operators and I just cannot imagine flying this distance wedged into one of those. Luckily on my SYD-KUL flight I got a row of 3 to myself
Air Asia premium is great for price. Even get lounge access in KUL. Regarding free meals and drinks. You get 1 meal and 1 drink plus a bottle of water. They are the same meals as you purchase in economy and cost about £4-£5.
Flown them several times now
ICN-KUL
KUL-KTM
MEL-DPS
KUL-SYD
In total I have spent less than £700 for all those and really can't fault in any way for that cost.
Question to all those who have flown Premium Flatbed before – are the seats fully flat or angled flat? Or are they at that 3° angle that compensates for the angle that the plane flies?
the premium flatbed is much more comfortable than any other angle lie flat seat, especially in row 1, the bulk head has slightly more leg room. The food is very tasty, but the portions are SOOOOOOOOOOOO small, you'd probably need 3 or 4 meals to equal one regular meal. The pillow and blankets are super comfortable.
Yes highly recommend AirAsia Premium, just took it KUL-SYD. I think there is a real market for the 'just the bed' product, which I would much prefer over premium economy or the LCC's recliner style business, for an overnight flight.
Oh and must try the Nasi Lemak.
how do you know david foster only flies private?
I flew Air Asia flat beds a few weeks ago DMK-NRT. If you know what to expect and just plan to sleep its a perfect product. Just 2 rows and the best thing is that below the curtain is the quiet zone. My gf and I paid less than 250Dollar for the one-way flight. So overall a great experience, especially if you only look for one-ways.