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Another Airline Jumps Onboard the Pre-Ordered Premium Meals Bandwagon

Now that Malaysia Airlines has become a full-fledged member in the Oneworld Alliance, they've enhanced the experience for hungry premium passengers by letting more people in on the Chef-On-Call service.

Originally only for Platinum level frequent-flyers in their Enrich program traveling in first and business class, the perk was eventually offered to all who could pay the big bucks for a first class seat. Now, the folks in the business class cabin get to pick their meal before flying. Unlike the chef programs of a few other airlines, however, there's not actually a chef on-board.

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One Airline's Adults-only Section May Be Better Than First Class

Last year, we talked about Air Asia X's plan to incorporate a section of their economy cabin specifically for those flyers that would prefer to not sit near children. After quick mention that sparked some heated discussion over the topic, the LCC have committed to the passenger enhancement.

Joining the likes of Malaysia Airlines and Thai Airways, both of which have some sort of restriction on flying children, Air Asia has reserved the first 7 rows of its forward economy cabin for passengers that can cough up an extra $15 —for advance seat selection, not specifically this cabin— and sit amongst passengers that are older than 12 years old.

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What Malaysia Airlines' Addition to the Oneworld Alliance Means for You

We knew it was happening, but now it’s official. Your travels around the world have just gotten a little bit easier, as Malaysia Airlines is now the newest member of the oneworld global airline alliance. They’re joining buddies like American Airlines, British Airways, Qantas, and Cathay Pacific—along with plenty of others. Plenty of stuff will remain pretty much business as usual now that Malaysia Airlines has found a new family, but there’s also a few changes that will improve the way you get around.

One of the newest things we find most useful is the ability to burn frequent flyer miles on Malaysia Airlines flights. All those flights on American Airlines to spots like Dallas-Ft. Worth and Chicago just got more valuable, as they’ll now jet you all the way over to Kuala Lumpur. From the United States options are somewhat limited, but redeemable flights exist out of Los Angeles International Airport to both Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo. After that you’re in Malaysia, so your options to travel even farther are plentiful.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet This Year's 'Miss Tourism International'

Media outlets and blogs from the Philippines are reporting that Miss Philippines Rizzini Alexis Gomez was also crowned the 2012/2013 Miss Tourism International in a pageant held over New Year's Eve in Malaysia. According to reports Ms. Gomez credited her win to preparations she conducted over the course of months.

The contest, which we promise is real and not just something we made up so we could run pictures we poached from the winner's Facebook page, has been running every year since 1994 with the exception of a few here and there. It even has a webpage, which admittedly is hilariously bad and doesn't seem to have this year's results. But it's a webpage on the Internet, so you can be sure that it's real.

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Lion Air Plans Their Own Low-Cost Carrier to Stick It to AirAsia

Lion Air isn’t exactly a pricey carrier if you’re looking to bop around Asia, but it looks like they might just be getting a little bit cheaper. Clearly they’re sensing a little bit of unwelcome competition from other carriers, so they’re doing what everyone else is doing—they’re starting up their very own low cost carrier.

The plan will be to go up against AirAsia in Malaysia, as Lion Air will look to compete for your hard earned money. The new airline will take to the skies around May of next year, and it’ll be known as Malindo Airways. Obviously they’ll start small, but they’re already looking big with hopes of reaching around 100 planes within a decade or so.

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OMG. In-Flight Bubble Tea.

Remember when we recommended what to purchase on your next AirAsia flight? Well, the super budget, yet uber cheeky, budget carrier has added another item to add to the list. Bubble Tea!

If you know the magic of bubble tea, you understand our excitement. If you haven't tasted it's refreshing goodness with little surprises, let us tell you, you are missing out. You may have seen people toting clear plastic cups of tea with black 'pearls' on the bottom, usually punctuated with a brightly colored fat straw. It's flavored tea, mostly chilled, usually served over large black tapioca pearls. The sweet, balanced and exotic flavor of the tea is kind of a big deal in Asia and international cafes.

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Air Asia X Wants to Fly You and 301 of Your Friends to Malaysia, for Free

Round up your friends, because Air Asia X has the contest for you! The Kuala Lumpur-based airline is sending out a call for their latest contest, Friendsy, for one person to win a flight from Sydney, Australia to the Malaysian capital. Sounds like a normal contest, but not so fast. Here is the twist: you can elect up to 302 Facebook friends to fly with you.

Only Facebook fans of the airline can enter to win the dream trip. Once you put together the ultimate travel group, you and your buddies will fly in your very own Airbus A330. Don't worry if you cannot find that amount of people with whom you are willing to travel; the empty seats will not be sold to the public.

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Malaysia Airlines' Newest Ban on Children is Its Most Ambitious Yet

When Malaysia Airlines promised that their new Airbus A380's would showcase bleeding-edge innovations in passenger comfort, we assumed they were just referring to the impressive engineering lengths to which they'd gone: 2 decks and 494 seats' worth of new chairs and USB-enabled entertainment systems. But while technology is important—and no one appreciates slick travel rollouts more than we do—there's more to in-flight coziness than extra legroom and the ability to watch your illegally downloaded House MD episodes on the screen in front of you.

Our buddies over at Australian Business Traveller heard it first that that they're also going to go ahead and ban children from the top deck of their new airplanes.

"Noise-sensitive passengers," by which we assume they mean "everybody," will now be able to reserve those seats secure in the knowledge that screaming babies will be at least one full plane deck below. Thus the first lesson of this post: if you're flying from Kuala Lumpur to London or Sydney this summer, consider Malaysia Airlines.

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What's Up with the Oneworld Alliance in 2012

After a challenging year for some of the founding members of the Oneworld alliance, 2012 will surely be brighter. In 2011, the alliance saw American Airlines file for bankruptcy and Qantas' chief grounding the entire network to challenge labor disputes, plus Iberia closing out the year with rounds of employee strikes.

There were some shining stars, however, with the finalization of International Airline Group (the conglomerate that combines British Airways and Iberia), Cathay Pacific offering overhauled cabins and in-flight amenities, and Japan Airlines emerging from bankruptcy stronger and more stable.

As we get going with 2012, we can't help but notice the huge changes happening amongst these airline buddies. Oneworld is the world's smallest of the major airline alliances, yet consistently hits the high marks in passenger ratings. With the addition of 3 new carriers, Oneworld will gain a fighting chance to excel in years to come. Here's what's happening meanwhile:

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AirAsia Boss Launching Another Malaysian Airline, for Some Reason

Demonstrating impressive complete disregard for the liklihood of a global financial meltdown, AirAsia boss Tony Fernandes is launching a premium Malaysian airline to run shuttles between Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Jakarta and Singapore.

Dubbed Caterham Jet, the regional airline will cater to business executives rich enough to pay for ultra-premium flights but not so rich that they have access to private jets. We're presuming people like that exist, but it seems like kind of a specialized demographic. Even worse, it's the exact demographic that Qantas is already targeting with their new RedQ airline.

Global economic retraction plus niche customer base plus direct competition from Qantas equals...no way this works, right? We're quite sure they had focus groups and market studies and everything, but this just doesn't sound like the kind of thing that would work.

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Flying First Class on Malaysia Airlines Isn't for Cry Babies. Literally.

Forget strangers who nap on your shoulder, clip their toenails in the aisle or talk to you straight through the flight; the universal worst seatmate a flyer could (not) hope for is a crying baby in their ear. Don't get us wrong as we love babies, just not when we've paid good money to get to where we're going in one piece and in peace.

As you can imagine, the frustrations are magnified when noisy babies are brought into the higher priced Business and First Class cabins. Oftentimes travelers choose to pay the premium cost for the premium benefit of sitting in a quieter cabin, in more spacious seats, and maybe getting sleep to adjust to time zones or prepare for a stressful day. And then a baby cries and what's the point anymore?

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Malaysia Airlines Boots Up First iPad Ticket Kiosks

A different sort of iPad kiosk being tested

Are you one of the almost 3 million people who have purchased Apple's new iPad? We already know that Australia's low-cost airline Jetstar is, since they'll be the first airline to bring the gadgets onboard as in-flight entertainment next month. But now Malaysia Airlines is also getting in on the game by becoming the first carrier to use iPads as kiosks for selling tickets.

If you're in Kuala Lumpur say, and you'd like to buy yourself a Malaysia Airlines ticket and you'd prefer to drop by their offices to do so, you'll now find the new "iPad MHkiosks" there, which ask you to select your itinerary and pay with a credit card. You'll then immediately receive confirmation via SMS and email. The kiosk eliminate any need to print tickets and you steer clear of having to pay an admin fee, such as you would pay using one of their agents.

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