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Tags: Airplane News / Airline News / Air Asia / Air Asia X / LCCs / Budget Travel / Travel With Children / → All Tags

Baby Born On Air Asia Plane Gets Free Flights For Life

In our next life, we'd like to return as a baby born aboard an Air Asia flight. Talk about lucky—a pregnant woman on a flight between Penang and Kuching on Borneo went into surprise labor while in the air, prompting the plane to try for an emergency landing in Kuala Lumpur, but the baby popped out before they could get on the ground.

After the successful delivery, the mother and child were transported to a KL hospital, where they were visited by the higher-ups at Air Asia, who presented them with the rights to free flights for life. Assuming that Air Asia will be around until the kid hits retirement in something like sixty years, he could really make a name for himself traveling around Asia—or beyond, since Air Asia now also flies to both London and is busily signing paperwork to come to both Paris and Los Angeles. Boy oh boy are we jealous of this little boy. The question now is...did he kinda join the mile high club just being born up there?

Related Stories:
· Lifetime free flights for baby born on plane [AFP]
· Talking With Air Asia's CEO Tony Fernandes About US Plans [Jaunted]
· Air Asia coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: jetalone]

Tags: Airfare Sales / Air Asia / LCCs / Budget Travel / Asia Travel / Travel Deals / → All Tags

Air Asia's Big Sale Makes Us Want To Book Some $17 Flights

One of our favorite low cost carriers, Air Asia, is not just cool because it keeps adding more routes—like Kuala Lumpur to Paris on the cheap and the Indian destinations like Thiruvananthapuram just to name a couple of last week's highlights—but it's also giving us ideas for our 2010 travel plans by holding a big airfare sale at the moment.

For bookings made between now and Sunday, you can get bargain tickets for travel between January 11 and April 30, 2010 for a bunch of Asian routes. The cheapest flights get as low as 19 Ringgit ($5.50) but they're mostly internal Malaysian flights; to get from Kuala Lumpur to further afield, there are deals like KL to pretty much anywhere in Indonesia or Thailand for 59 Ringgit ($17) and KL to Australian destinations for 199 Ringgit ($58). Get booking fast or we might snap up all the seats first.

Related Stories:
· Air Asia [Official Site]
· Let's Go Thiruvananthapuram! [Jaunted]
· Sarkozy Approves Air Asia X's Low-Cost Flights to Paris [Jaunted]

[Photo: Auswandern Malaysia]

Tags: Travel Health / Disease / Southeast Asia Travel / → All Tags

New Malaysian Malaria: Monkeys and Mosquitoes To Blame

Travelers to Southeast Asia beware: there's a new strain of malaria in town. Researchers have recently figured out that the Plasmodium knowlesi strain of malaria, which used to be confined to Malaysian macaque monkeys, can kill humans too.

The especially nasty part about this new human strain of malaria is that doctors have a hard time recognizing it. Symptoms and disease progression look scarily similar to other less serious forms of malaria, so you might end up dead before the doctors realize they should've done something differently.

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Tags: Air Asia / Air Asia X / LCCs / Budget Travel / Nicolas Sarkozy / New Routes / → All Tags

Sarkozy Approves Air Asia X's Low-Cost Flights To Paris

Go get 'em low-cost carrier Air Asia X is taking another step towards world domination—well, their words were "global expansion"—with the big announcement that they have now received approval to start up cheap long-haul flights from Kuala Lumpur to Paris.

None other than French president Nicolas Sarkozy himself informed Malaysian Prime Minister Razak this week that Air Asia X would be allowed to land at the Orly Airport in Paris. Air Asia X hasn't yet made more details public; we're in the dark on how soon this service will start, and what it will cost, but they launched their Kuala Lumpur to London service earlier this year, and you can grab those flights for around $250 one way.

We figure it's only reasonable to guess that the Paris version won't be too different. These low-cost long-hauls are certainly giving us ideas for some amazing budget around-the-world trips—we might go start loading up our backpacks while Air Asia decides on Paris airfares.

Related Stories:
· Air Asia To Start Paris Flights [AFP]
· Air Asia X Wants to Long-Haul You From New York and California [Jaunted]
· Air Asia X Launches Low-Cost, Long-Haul Service [Jaunted]

[Photo: Deanster1983]

Tags: Food Travel / Malaysia Travel / Indonesia Travel / → All Tags

New Red Durians In Malaysia, But Same Old Smell

If you've ever smelled the supremely unpleasant odor of a durian fruit, you'll understand why we've never been brave enough to try one. This spiky, malodorous fruit comes from Malaysia and Indonesia, and while many people have assured us the flesh tastes heavenly, we've just never got past the smell.

But durians are ready for the eating in Malaysia right now, and there's even a new durian trend this season: the red flesh durian. Found growing wild in the jungles in the state of Sabah, they say that the flesh is drier than a regular durian, and the taste is a little sourer, but it's gaining popularity with tourists because of its bright red flesh.

The bonus is that at the moment, the red durian is still a lot cheaper than a regular durian. Only problem for us is that it wasn't the price or the color that was putting us off before. The bad smell, apparently, remains.

Related Stories:
· Unique Red Durian Making Heads Turn [The Star]
· Eight Minutes of Durian [Jaunted]
· Durian Cupcakes Are The New Pot Brownies [Jaunted]

[Photo: The Star]

Tags: Airline Rumors / Air Asia X / New Routes / Gossip / Kuala Lumpur Travel / → All Tags

Air Asia X Wants to Long-Haul You From New York and California

Update: Just heard from our tipster, the plan is to have the flights be direct to KL from Cali and JFK.

We love airline rumors! It's been a long time since we had something juicy to talk about. So let's get gossiping.

A tipster says that Air Asia X is looking to possibly expand its routes to Kuala Lumpur and they have their eyes set on the United States.

Azran Osman Rani (CEO of AirAsia X) has been talking to JFK and 2 California airports regarding launching long haul service from KL. There's nothing definitive lined up, but the time-frame would be in about a year.

Now, we're working on tracking down when this would be an alliance between Air Asia and another airline, or if Air Asia would man the flight(s) the whole way. But if you've got any more inside scoop, we'd love to hear it. Similarly, would you fly Air Asia X from the states to KL on their no-frills planes? Let us know.

Related Stories:
· Inside The No-Frills, Long-Haul Flight on Air Asia X [Jaunted]

Tags: First-Person Flight Reviews / Air Asia X / LCCs / Air Asia / Travel Videos / → All Tags

Inside The No-Frills, Long-Haul Flight on Air Asia X

As regular Ryanair self-abusers know, the world’s first long-haul, "no frills" flight is not a concept that particularly fills us with longing. But Air Asia X’s launch sent prices from London to the Far East plummeting when booking opened last November, so we were intrigued. But would people really put up with no frills on a 13 hour flight? We turned reluctant guinea pig to find out.

A quick admission to start with. We were originally told that this was the inaugural flight to KL. Except when we got to the Air Asia launch party the night before, we realised it wasn’t – the first flight was taking off as we listened to The Saturdays. However, with the glitches we experienced on day two, we’re kind of glad we didn’t catch the first one.

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Tags: Air Asia / Tony Fernandes / Airports / International Airports / → All Tags

AirAsia Growing So Much It Deserves Its Own Airport

What do you do if your low-cost airline finds the local airport simply too crowded for your liking? Well, if you have the confidence of Tony Fernandes and you're in charge of always-growing AirAsia, you just decide to build your own airport.

AirAsia has plans to build an exclusive-use airport in Kuala Lumpur, closer to downtown than the main airport and ready to fly 30 million AirAsia passengers around annually from March 2011. Tony Fernandes reckons this will cut AirAsia’s costs by 30% and bring down ticket prices even more.

Enter the Malaysian government. Although they approved this airport before, the rumor now is that they will backtrack on the agreement and tell AirAsia to live with the normal airports instead. Pretty safe bet that Tony Fernandes isn't at all impressed with that. And if it means losing our cheaper fares, neither are we.

Related Stories:
· AirAsia Braces Itself For KL Backtrack [AsiaOne]
· AirAsia Unveils Plans for Own Airport [AFP]
· AirAsia’s Grown Uninhibited By Its Narcissism [Jaunted]

[Photo: JasonDGreat]

Tags: 70s Revival / Island Travel / Islands / Lists / → All Tags

Tioman Island For The Top Ten

When we read that Tioman Island, off the east coast of Malaysia, was making top 10 lists of the world's best islands back in the 1970s, we wondered why we'd never heard of it before.

But it seems Tioman had already had its 15 minutes of fame even then: Way back in 1958 it was used as the "Bali Hai" location for the film "South Pacific." (Ask your parents. Or grandparents.) Yet we've seen the name pop up a couple of times recently, so we suspect they're trying to bring back the good times.

These days you can get a ferry there from the mainland Malaysian coast or get a flight from Kuala Lumpur or Singapore; there are a few different accommodation options though it's all still pretty low-key. There's great scuba-diving both on reefs and wrecks and a bunch of relaxing beaches, so it seems like there's reason enough to try it out. At best, it'll be a fantastic summer vacation spot and at worst, it'll be a time travel trip back to what was hip in the '70s.

Related Stories:
· Tioman Island [Official Site]
· A Little Known Island Gem [The Age]
· Malaysia Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: yunmeng]

Tags: AirAsia / Air Asia X / Tony Fernandes / Asia Travel / Airlines / → All Tags

AirAsia's Growth Uninhibited By Its Narcissism

OK AirAsia, we know you’re one of the few carriers with healthy specs. But we think you might be getting a big ego. First, you offered an on-time guarantee and now your CEO is talking about growing AirAsia X, the company’s Australian subsidiary, tenfold by 2010. That’s faster than when Krispy Kreme suddenly glazed the entire United States in the late '90s.

Both AirAsia X and its Southeast Asian affiliate AirAsia are rapidly buying planes and adding destinations. And as Asian carriers ratcheted up fuel surcharges recently, founder Tony Fernandes scrapped AirAsia’s. Confidence is clearly not a problem for this carrier.

In fact, the one-year-old AirAsia X division will have one billion ringgit ($276 million) in profits by the end of 2009, says CEO Azran Osman Rani. This year’s profits will be about 350 million ringgit.

We’ll tell you if they back up the bluster with a flight review next week: We’re flying AirAsia from Phuket to Bangkok, and we're expecting to be impressed.

Related Stories:
· Malaysia’s AirAsia X Plans to Expand Sales Tenfold [AFP, via Google]
· AirAsia coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: christophe ramos]

Tags: Malaysia Travel / Websites / Mahathir Mohamad / → All Tags

Malaysia's Former Prime Minister Learns to Blog

The last we heard about the Malaysian prime minister, it was 2002 and he was the target of a murder plot arranged by the evil fashion designer Mugatu and nearly carried out by the loveable egomaniac Zoolander.

Now, we hear that the real-life guy is no pawn. If our mom's Facebook account and our grandfather's online dating habits aren't disturbing enough, we find out that former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is the hottest blogger in Malaysia. The 83-year-old Mohamad served as prime minister for 22 years until 2003. Interestingly, he uses the forum to express outrage for the press controls he implemented.

Posts range from wishing Hindus a Happy Deepavali from he and his wife to missives about why the current weak government will lead to the country's collapse. Old people, they'll say anything.

Related Stories:
· Mohamad's Blog [Official Site]
· Ex-leader Uses Blog to Needle Malaysia Government [IHT]

Tags: Airlines / AirAsia / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / Tony Fernandes / → All Tags

Asian LCCs: AirAsia Uses Its Bragging Rights

AirAsia must be feeling pretty good these days. The Malaysian low cost carrier frequently tops Asia tourism industry lists as the best of its kind. And it certainly lacks modesty, plastering the bragging rights across the sides of planes.

The airline has also grown to be Southeast Asia's largest LCC and plans to add nine new planes in 2009 to its existing fleet of 72. In fact, as tourism in the region picks up, the airline is getting downright cocky about its strength in the marketplace. Economic apocalypse? For AirAsia, life's a bear....

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