A recent weekend jaunt to Cebu left me with a slight sunburn and, more significantly, a weighty question to ponder. When planning trips in Asia, low-cost carriers—from Singapore-based operations like Jetstar and Tiger Airways to the ever-expanding Air Asia with its Kuala Lumpur hub to lesser-known options such as Airphil Express in the Philippines and Peach Aviation in Japan—can’t help but hold a certain appeal. Especially for short-haul flights, when an exorbitant fare might be a bigger turn-off than good service, comfortable seats, convenient flight times or the desire to rack up frequent-flier miles, many travelers (including myself) are willing to sacrifice all those bullet points for a good deal.
And many budget carriers do offer some perks besides low prices. For one, the cheeky Cebu Pacific flight attendants are rumored to perform the in-flight safety routine at the beginning of each journey to the tune of Lady Gaga songs! (Though when I flew them a few weeks back, I did not bear witness to any such performance and I was super bummed out.) Umm… I’m sure there are other pros. Oh, the Air Asia in-flight magazine isn’t terrible! And sometimes, when you have to sit really, really close to other passengers because the seats aren’t spaced far enough apart, you befriend interesting people. Or they cough on your tray table—depends on your luck.
And that brings us to the bothersome bits. The 6am departures. The delays, or even cancellations, without compensation. The surcharges for extra baggage—or any baggage at all. (That hot-button move, by the way, is de rigueur for airlines in the US, so maybe we spoiled folks over here in Asia shouldn’t whine TOO much about it.) The shrill, persistent hawking of food, beverages and other paraphernalia. There was a brief spell a few years back when Ireland-based Ryanair’s CEO was lambasted for proposing that he weasel even more cash out of his penny-pinching passengers by charging them to go to the bathroom. More recently, a Ryanair customer was charged 60 pounds for not having a paper copy of her boarding pass at the airport when she’d checked in online. At the time of writing, her outraged comment on Ryanair’s Facebook page had attracted 118,000 “likes” and over 6,000 comments—most of them sympathizers with similarly aggravating tales.
Everyone’s got a horror story. I slept in the Kuala Lumpur low-cost carrier terminal during a several-hour layover on the way back from Kota Kinabalu, sandwiched on the floor between large groups of Southeast Asian migrant workers and several African wholesalers toting around enormous taped boxes of goods. Hong Kong Airlines, which barely counts as a budget carrier but, ya know, is cheaper compared with gold-standard Cathay Pacific, recently left hundreds of travelers stranded for way longer than necessary after Typhoon Vicente.
A common refrain among various circles in Hong Kong is that, as we age, the call of the budget airline becomes less and less attractive—the slog, the hassle and the fuss just might not be worth it anymore. The difference between being 25 and 35? Maybe the latter would rather accrue as many miles as possible on their alliance of choice. Maybe, even after enjoying a lovely weekend on a beach in the Philippines, they’d just prefer not to fly into HKG at 12:45am on a Sunday night, missing the last Airport Express train and hence having to board an all-night bus to Tsim Sha Tsui that takes a circuitous route—and an hour and a half—to get to its destination. (This last account may or may not have been me and my hard-suffering friend a few weeks ago on my way back from Cebu.)
My take? Well, I’m a sucker for a bargain, and I like to travel as much as possible even for regular two-day weekends. For these quickies, I’ll book a low-cost carrier even if it means losing out on some sleep—and some sanity. But for my trips home to New York City, I refuse to compromise, shelling out for Cathay even when it means forking over a few thousand extra dollars. The miles add up, and on a 16-hour flight, what’s available on the TV screen in front of you and the tone of the lady handing you some tea makes a huge difference. What’s your opinion? Email me at the address below.