1.1 million cheap tickets for sale

[Andrew Ong 1]

From The Star:

 

1.1 million cheap tickets up for grabs

 

By WONG SAI WAN and ROYCE CHEAH

 

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysians can now look forward to more cheap air fares as the country’s two rival airlines are offering some 1.1 million cut-price seats to domestic and international destinations.

 

Prices as low as RM1 for domestic AirAsia flights and RM19 for domestic Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flights will make passengers spoilt for choice.

 

AirAsia is also offering low-price seats for international destinations with one-way flights to Macau from RM61 and Chiang Mai from RM41. Flights to holiday destinations like Phuket will cost RM21 or to Hanoi from RM51.

 

MAS’ cheapest flight is for a one-way ticket to Penang, Johor Baru or Kuantan whereas the most expensive tickets are at RM139 to Labuan and Kota Kinabalu.

 

 

The sales period for AirAsia is from April 23 to 29 for travel between Oct 1 and March 29 next year.

 

As for MAS, the sales period is from April 23 to 28 for travel between May 7 and May 22, and, June 14 and June 30. However, travel will be restricted to certain days within those periods for some destinations.

 

MAS’ cheap fares fall under its SuperSavers promotion with 500,000 tickets allocated over six days for domestic locations only.

 

AirAsia’s low fares promotion is a celebration of its recent F1 Grand Prix partnership with the AT&T Williams team, with the 600,000 low-fare seats offer going under its Fast & Furious campaign.

 

Both airlines are only allowing booking of seats online and prices do not include airport tax and other surcharges.

 

AirAsia and MAS denied they were in a price war, saying the offer had already been planned for some time.

 

AirAsia executive vice-president Kathleen Tan said they were “extremely flattered to observe other carriers imitating our successful marketing model.”

 

She added that AirAsia promises the lowest fare that no other carrier could match all year round.

 

“I will let the public decide who is responding to a price war. Smart consumers will vote with their own pockets,” Tan said .

 

MAS senior general manager for network revenue management Bernard Francis denied that the carrier was copying AirAsia.

 

“We have a strategic rollout plan for our promotions. In fact, from December last year, we started our monthly promotions for domestic routes to encourage travel in support of Visit Malaysia Year 2007 and to address lean travel periods,” Francis said in an interview.

 

When asked if MAS was reacting to a market that demanded such offers, he said MAS promotions were targeted and planned.

 

“In addition to attractive fares offered during the Malaysia Airlines Travel Fair and during MATTA fair, we will continue to do a series of domestic and international promotions this year to stimulate travel as part of our strategy to maximise revenue opportunities,” he added.

[Mushrif A 3]

TheStar's reporting is inaccurate and incomplete. The cheapest MH fare undre this promo is RM9 (MYY-BKI), not RM19.

 

I also find it strange that the text of the article does not mention where the promo flights were supposed to originate from. Just vague sentences like "one-way flight to Macau from RMxx"...but from where? BKI? BKK? KUL?

[Simon 3]

MAS price is still sky high

[Seng Lim 0]

Those who are smart enough already grabbed the 500K FREE Seats promo by AirAsia a week earlier between 18 to 20 of April. While for MAS can basically forget about them based on the fare they offered.

[Edwin Lau 0]

But at least MAS has the initiative to give out low fares.

[Gavin Andrew David 6]

To be honest , why not pay extra and you 're pretty much assured that you're not going to have someone tell you your flight is delayed ( which is quite frequent ) and you're left sitting in a ' warehouse ' that is given a glamorous name of ' a low cost airport terminal ' .