Thursday, 19 January 2012

AirAsia Terminates Flights to London & Paris

And so AirAsia has announced it will discontinue its flights from Kuala Lumpur (KL) to London, Paris, Mumbai and New Delhi by 31 March 2012. Instead, they have decided to focus on routes to Australia with flights from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney starting in April 2012.

As a traveller, it’s a blow to my travel plans of visiting lovely places in Europe at budget prices. I flew KL-London in Sept 2009 for RM1,830 and KL-Paris in Nov 2011 for RM1,697.40. Where in the world can you get prices like that?

First AirAsia flew into London Stanstead, then into London Gatwick. Finally the airline decided to axe the route altogether. What a shame!


I strongly believe AirAsia should keep at least one of its European destination. Then at least travellers from Asia can have a point of entry into Europe before taking other budget airlines like Ryanair to other parts of Europe.

Now that one competitor is down, this is a golden opportunity for other airlines in particular Middle Eastern airlines like Emirates and Etihad to rise to the occasion, save the day and make a profit out of it.

Emirates recently had a fantastic offer where a return ticket from KL to selected cities in Europe was going for approximately RM2,400 (depending on which city).

Hope springs eternal for budget travellers like me.


11 comments:

khengsiong said...

AAX terminates flights to Europe and Northern India in exchange for Firefly terminating its flights to Sabah & Sarawak!

Anonymous said...

Yes, its a shame Air Asia is terminating flights to Europe. There goes my hope of going to France in the near future!

However, the good news is that now it is flying directly to Sydney, and when I checked out the prices, its about S$420.00 all in from KL to Sydney! Now I can visit my relatives more often at a cheaper rate!

BTW, wishing you a happy and prosperous Year of the Dragon and may this be a merry and fulfilling year for you!

Julie Lim said...

Hi Khengsiong,

Yeah I heard Firefly terminated its flights to East Malaysia, probably because AirAsia is too powerful a force to be reckoned with.

Julie Lim said...

Hi Juphelia,

AirAsia is concentrating on Australia instead of Europe because the route's simply more lucrative as there are more ppl in Asia with kids, relatives and family in Australia compared to Europe, and you're one of them :-)

A Happy Chinese New Year to you too. May the Year of the Water Dragon bring you prosperity and good luck!

Marsha Maung said...

yeah... =( and i've not even been to London with AA. Too late now, i guess...

Julie Lim said...

Hi Marsha,

There are other options like Emirates and Etihad that offer cheap tickets during promo time. Good luck!

Queen of hearts said...

Yeah I'm bummed by this news too :( I was thinking and mentally calculating the cost to fly to London via AA. sigh. With MAS I can forget it lah...it won't be in the near future.

Well, I've never taken my kids to Gold Coast. Maybe I'll just do that first. :P

Julie Lim said...

Queen of Hearts,

The silver lining in the dark cloud is that there are now super duper cheap flights to Australia via AirAsia. But most people who have been to Australia told me there's nothing much to see there. Europe would win hands down.

I think the Arab airlines are currently the cheapest way to get to Europe, especially during promo time. MAS I'm not sure but they may have good offers occasionally.

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