The Worst Air Asia Experience Ever

I was supposed to fly to Pekanbaru, Indonesia for an important project meeting this Monday with two colleagues. However, something happened unexpectedly..., we missed the flight. Yep no kidding, three of us missed the flight even though we arrived at LCCT on time (in fact earlier) and had gotten all our boarding passes. The plane just took off without our attention.a

We made complaint to Air Asia customer service but the officers were not helpful at all. They insisted Air Asia is running a No-refund policy. They even requested us to lodge a complaint via email to the customer service department.

Because of this "unacceptable" and "unexpected" incident, our meeting was forced to be cancelled, the return tickets and hotel booking were all wasted... What worsens the situation was the incident actually pissed off our customers in Indonesia.


Below is an complaint email written by one of my colleague. You will have a better idea of what happened and how it happened after reading it.

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Dear Customer Service officer,

We are formally submitting our request for investigation on flight QZ 7453 scheduled gate number as well as opening and closing time on 2^nd of June 2008.

My colleagues and I have missed the flight number QZ 7453 this morning despite arriving at departure gate T6 before the scheduled gate closing time. The flight departure time was scheduled at 10:50am and according to the boarding pass issued by AirAsia, the gate will close at 10 minutes before departure time.

We were absolutely sure we were not late for the flight and we were waiting at the correct gate area at around 10:30am on 2^nd of June 2008. There were no boarding activities at gate T6 or any information of flight QZ 7453 at the electronic signboard next to the gate. We also did not hear any announcement. We waited for more than half an hour and decided to proceed to the counter to check with the officer at the gate to find out if the flight was delayed. To our surprise, we were told the flight has departed and we have missed it and nothing can be done. We also know there other customer that missed the same flight. We went to counter R16 to speak to another officer on duty and he offer no help but informed us that the officer at the gate actually noted down that we reach the gate at 11:15am. That amount to falsification of fact as we were at the gate area already at around 10:30am. And we have actually checked in much at around 9:35am. Your system should be able to check when the boarding pass was issued as well as actual gate number, opening and closing time. As a result of missing the flight, we have missed out important meeting in Indonesia and our scheduled returned flight on June 4^th is now of no value. We have tried to ask another officer by the name of Azuar Karim at counter R12 to give us the actual gate (T6) opening and closing time for flight QZ 7453 but was told that the information were for internal use only. However, Mr Azuar Karim has shown more professionalism and has actually given us this email address and phone number 03-xxxxxxxx to make our report.

We are formally requesting AirAsia customer service to investigate this issue and we are willing to cooperate in assisting and facilitate the investigation process. We are demanding full refund on all three tickets as well as report clarification for the above incident. Should we do not receive any assistance from AirAsia customer service within 14 days including the day of incident, we shall report the case and seek all necessary assistance from other authority to justify the case.

Thank you for your action.

Sincerely,

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It has been 2 days since the incident, and we have yet to receive any reply or feedback from Air Asia... Sigh... This really disappointed us. Luckily we did not check in any luggage that day. Otherwise our luggage will be gone forever...



Written by MM
Photos downloaded from http://image.google.com