Tim Leffel's Cheapest Destinations

The Budget Airline Expansion in Asia

One of the big changes in Southeast Asia travel in the past few years has been the explosion of budget airlines there. Places that were formerly only serves by buses or the big state-owned airlines are now a cheap flight and a short hop away. The Wall Street Journal even took a bunch of them for a test ride in this past Thursday’s edition. While there were some hiccups here and there, overall the trips sounded more pleasant than your average U.S. domestic flight. The article reports that this is partly because these upstarts are using very new planes instead of old creaky ones.

“All five flights were on time, nobody lost our luggage, and service was generally upbeat and friendly—although we did overhear one AirAsia flight attendant tell a British passenger whose seat belt didn’t fit that he should lose weight.”

Over 30 of these small airlines have launched in Asia since 2002, including the likes of Jetstar, Tiger Airways, Nok Air, and AirAsia. If you really want to keep up with the options, there’s a good blog called the Asia News Desk.

The downside of all the options is that it takes some digging to figure out who flies where and you usually have to figure it out and then book through the airlines themselves. Of course the ever-enterprising travel agents in Bangkok may do it for you for a few baht–I don’t know. (If anyone reading this has managed it, leave a comment for us.)

Some of these lines are now doing more than short-hop flights too. The WSJ writer flew from London to Hong Kong on Oasis Hong Kong Airlines for $266—and got a nice meal and an individual movie screen. Sweet.