Calling out to all budget travelers out there, traveling in Malaysia is not all about Malaysia Airlines or Air Asia anymore. There is this (relatively) new airline that provides short haul domestic flights at highly affordable rates. It’s called – Firefly.
Firefly provides odd routes – some of them are probably unheard of before such as Johor Bahru to Kota Kinabalu or Kuantan to Penang just to name a few.
If you cut down a little on the time spent over facebook and twitter and check out firefly website instead, you might catch promotional offers that are just too good to say NO to. In fact, I have already snatched up least half a dozen of return tickets to my home state Sabah from KL – of which all of them I had only bought for about RM60 each! Can you imagine?? Even a jug of beer in KL can simply cost me that much! 😛
The only downside of Firefly that I can see right now is the booking system. For now, you can only book your ticket using credit card. Being so used to maybank2.com, I can almost see it as a hassle especially when all of my credit cards have already reached their limits. 😀
I actually flew with Firefly for the first time last Saturday. Being so used to Malaysia Airlines and Air Asia when traveling within Malaysia (and beyond), I expected for the worst. Surprisingly though that Firefly is not that bad at all. I mean, it’s quite more like Air Asia, in-flight management-wise and even the seating comfort.
They do sell quite a variety of foods and drinks in the flight so you’ll never go starved. Of course, the prices are quite expensive – like a small bottle of mineral water is sold at RM4 (USD1.30) but then it doesn’t make it any worse than Air Asia (since MAS airfares are all inclusive of drinks and foods).
Mind to tell you that it really is like Air Asia or probably any other airlines where you gotta book a ticket far in advance to get a better deal. Last minute booking might cost you a bomb. I arrived at the airport quite too early I had actually asked if I could get an earlier flight back to Kota Kinbalu.
“You can but I’m afraid it would be very very expensive”, the guy at the info counter assured me. I adamantly asked for the price. “RM600 for the ticket, another RM100 charged for the flight change. All in all about RM700”. Expensive indeed. I opted to wait for my original flight and saved my money for beer-ing sessions in KK later that evening.
They have in-flight magazine which is to me much better than Air Asia’s Travel3Sixty. At least it doesn’t brag too much about their accomplishments and Lotus and staff Excellency and all. Talking about high quality contents here.
So – Firefly seems to be a good budget airline to travel with. If I were Tony Fernandez, I would be worried by now.
Booking Tips:
If you want to buy one of their promotional airfares, you have a few things to do so that the price would stay low. There are two fees there which are indicated as Taxes/Fees and Services and Fees. Take note that you can actually CANCEL OUT the Services and Fees (whatever it is), leaving only Taxes/Fees to pay apart from the original ticket fare.
Then, you have the options of leaving all the rest NIL so that you only have to pay for the Taxes/Fess and the original ticket price.
I mean, com’on. 2-3 hours of flying, you couldn’t die of hunger. I would usually try to pack everything into my hand-luggage so that I don’t have to pay for a checked-in luggage. Besides, if I really have to, I can always add them in later prior to the flight. 🙂
Pingback: fitrobert