Thai Smile Vs Air Asia

[choi choi]

Just back from UK.Check in Air Asia. "One thousand baht please" WTF! " Baggage price not inc in fare"!Sneaky!
(Maybe in the small print somewhere!)
On board flight no refreshments.Not even water.
Return trip was with Thai Smile. baggage limit 20 kilo. My case was 30 kilo! (farang food for the year)!
I was willing to pay excess baggage. But was waived! I offered tip....refused !
On board flight , tea/coffee served.Water, and a nice liver sausage roll!
AND Flight attendants sexy short skirts.

[jackspratt]

You would also enjoyed the pleasure of a few more inches - in your seat pitch on Thai Smile.

[747man]

Just back from UK.Check in Air Asia. "One thousand baht please" WTF! " Baggage price not inc in fare"!Sneaky!
(Maybe in the small print somewhere!)
On board flight no refreshments.Not even water.
Return trip was with Thai Smile. baggage limit 20 kilo. My case was 30 kilo! (farang food for the year)!
I was willing to pay excess baggage. But was waived! I offered tip....refused !
On board flight , tea/coffee served.Water, and a nice liver sausage roll!
AND Flight attendants sexy short skirts.

AND Flight attendants sexy short skirts......And that was only the Males !!

[karonsteve]

Smile for me every time. Better service, better seat and far, far better eye candy. As an aside I have never seen a male steward serving on a Smile flight.

[tamada]

I am a TSmile exclusive domestically but I had a surprise last month. Knowing I would have close to 25kg and they usually chase up the few hundred baht over the bog standard allowance, I upgraded to Plus to save the faff. I had to move the flight one-day ahead but unusually, their website wouldn't process it (same flight/class next day) despite there being seats available. When a flight is full, it disappears from online access. So I called their hotline and it appears that Plus wasn't available on the new travel date so would have to agree to a downgrade to pleb class and eat the loss. No biggie. Then she says I will he charged for the downgrade. Pourquoi? Apparently my Plus online booking carried a 20% seniors discount whereas a pleb class booking attracts only a 10% discount thus the coach fare worked out at 178 baht more than Plus...and I would need to pay for the baggage excess too.

Fronts up next day, still assuming Plus must be full, checks in but nobody asked for extra bag money. Cool. Note that my seat is 42A which is front of bus. Curious. Boards the A320 and find it's a single-class cabin configuration: there's no Plus section of 12 seats and a wee curtain up front. It's all 3x3 coach, end to end. I never seen that config on TSmile before. Still cost me more to sit in a smaller seat but all client chargeable so not a worry.

[Bandung_Dero]

Verses VietJet:-
In June I booked a 7:30 AM Thai Smile flight to BKK to make an international connection. 3 days later I received an email from them informing me they had cancelled the flight (no reason) and were putting me on the 11:00 Flight. Well that wasn't going to work.
As VietJet also flies into Swampy I booked with them:- Twice the fare cost and can only pay in USD, very old aircraft (painted to look new) with thread bare carpets and worn (imitation) leather seats which are definitely NOT Farang compatible and NO cabin service. In Swampy the plane parked in some sort of obscure corner of the apron and we waited 30 minutes for the busses to arrive and then it took another 20 minutes to get into the terminal then another 20 minutes for the bags to arrive!!! = NEVER AGAIN.

[tamada]

I had to use AirAsia international out of DMK last month and based on pre-Covid experience, I wasn't looking forward to it. However, check in was easy peasy doing it the old-fashioned way and avoiding the self-service kiosks or printing your own baggage tags. The transit at KLIA2 was easier than last time as AA had checked my bag all the way through to the final destination. Previously, it was strictly point-to-point with a PITA claim and re-check required. KLIA2 is mostly unchanged though with few frills once you're airside.

On my "return" flight to SIN, I didn't have the magic bar code that enables their fastest self-service kiosk check in and bag drop so I strolled up to the lady doing nothing at their 'Red Carpet' bag drop and professed ignorance to their modern ways. She happily did my check in although I wasn't on their red carpet benefits scheme (cheap Malaysian client). All flights were on-time affairs, the last one got into Singapore 20 minutes early so I checked out their DF on arrival at T1. The usual stuff all open unlike BKK where only the likes if Gucci and Rolex appear to have survived Covid.

One thing I noted on all these AA flights was a half decent menu for in-flight dining that's bought and paid for on-line before the flight. Maybe 25% of pax had done this. If I'm using AA international again, I'll give it a whirl. Their rendang looked and smelled good.

[747man]

Smile for me every time. Better service, better seat and far, far better eye candy. As an aside I have never seen a male steward serving on a Smile flight.

As an aside I have never seen a male steward serving on a Smile flight.....How Can You be Soooooo Sure Steve ??

[Potamoi]

IFronts up next day, still assuming Plus must be full, checks in but nobody asked for extra bag money. Cool. Note that my seat is 42A which is front of bus. Curious. Boards the A320 and find it's a single-class cabin configuration: there's no Plus section of 12 seats and a wee curtain up front. It's all 3x3 coach, end to end. I never seen that config on TSmile before. Still cost me more to sit in a smaller seat but all client chargeable so not a worry.

Good info on TSmile config changeups, Tam. Shall keep that in mind for sure when using BKK.

If I am just going to Bangkok for domestic reasons and since I don't generally continue on to Pattaya, I tend to take Nok Air to DMK instead of BKK. I like the smaller airport and it tends to be closer to the places I need to go in Bangkok. Many people claimed in the past the Nok was always delayed. They were also in the news recently RE a weather related skidding off the runway in Chang Rai with rumors of a delayed evacuation which does give me pause.

I must report though that in the 250ish flights I have taken on Nok between 2008 and today only a handful were more than 20 min delayed. I have always found the cabin attendants efficient and happy. The food has pretty much disappeared but then I don't want to eat for such a short flight anyway (UTH-DMK).

I just booked a flight for the end of the month after a 2.5 year break but I am hopeful for an uneventful trip. With a base airfare of 747 THB (with VAT, airport tax and transaction fee the total was 924) for advanced purchase I am happy.

There are a couple of things I do not like which Nok seems to have copied from Air Asia. The way the web site auto selects baggage and insurance on the cheap tickets. These can be deselected of course but it still catches me once in a while when I am in a hurry to buy tickets. The other is the onset of a payment fee for every payment method online. It's only 70 baht plus VAT but I feel like it is just a bit less transparent than it could be.

I shall report back if there is anything noteworthy but for now I am a happy Nok/DMK customer. May be worth a try if the airport location makes sense.

[tamada]

I used Nok through DMK when I was working at Pearl Oil up on Viphavadi Rangsit. I could catch the red-eye out of Udon on Monday morning and still have my knees under the desk in the office around 9 am. Conversely, leaving the office late on Friday afternoon, I was always home before dinner at 8 pm in Udon. Handy as all buggery especially with no checked bags.

The post-Covid flight schedules indicate that most airlines seem to have trimmed their really early flights? TSmile used to have a 4th daily from BKK on weekends that would park up here overnight so was gone around 7 am. Getting into BKK before 9 am made for easy onward connections to SIN and SGN.

For my recent AA hop from DMK to KLIA2, I used TSmile to get to BKK and used the free inter-airport shuttle bus. That's still a basic but slick service, only half-a-dozen transfer pax and being mid-morning, avoided the rush-hour traffic. It took only 45 minutes so I had to wait 30 minutes for my AA flight check-in to open. Not much to do landside at DMK though. Even the seats are few and far between.

[tamada]

Verses VietJet:-
In June I booked a 7:30 AM Thai Smile flight to BKK to make an international connection. 3 days later I received an email from them informing me they had cancelled the flight (no reason) and were putting me on the 11:00 Flight. Well that wasn't going to work.
As VietJet also flies into Swampy I booked with them:- Twice the fare cost and can only pay in USD, very old aircraft (painted to look new) with thread bare carpets and worn (imitation) leather seats which are definitely NOT Farang compatible and NO cabin service. In Swampy the plane parked in some sort of obscure corner of the apron and we waited 30 minutes for the busses to arrive and then it took another 20 minutes to get into the terminal then another 20 minutes for the bags to arrive!!! = NEVER AGAIN.

I had absolutely NO complaints with VietJet Air to Nha Trang about ten years ago. Must be that bloody Covid that stuffed them up?

[choi choi]

Verses VietJet:-
In June I booked a 7:30 AM Thai Smile flight to BKK to make an international connection. 3 days later I received an email from them informing me they had cancelled the flight (no reason) and were putting me on the 11:00 Flight. Well that wasn't going to work.
As VietJet also flies into Swampy I booked with them:- Twice the fare cost and can only pay in USD, very old aircraft (painted to look new) with thread bare carpets and worn (imitation) leather seats which are definitely NOT Farang compatible and NO cabin service. In Swampy the plane parked in some sort of obscure corner of the apron and we waited 30 minutes for the busses to arrive and then it took another 20 minutes to get into the terminal then another 20 minutes for the bags to arrive!!! = NEVER AGAIN.

Seems the latest trend now. Cancelling flights! I was booked EVA Air.
I get an Email flight cancelled and rescheduled next day!
I had already booked domestic flight for that day.
So had to use the flight and book hotel!
The same return journey, flight on schedule.
I checked the seating few days before. Empty seats everywhere!.
Checked Day to fly, FULL! Obviously moved yesterdays flight to then!