bmchris

Far from it. A free ticket would be just Taxes and Statutory Fees. AirAsia was selling those for MYR9 earlier on. Naturally, add on a few fees, you could probably get it around MYR35 without baggage etc. 30% less than Firefly.

Here's the breakdown of my fare (each ticket - I bought a few for the family):

Base Fare: 8.68
Admin Fee: 30.00
Airport Tax: 9.00
GST: 2.32

The living standards in Malaysia are lower than Singapore, Hong Kong, Europe and North America I heard, so money definitely goes further.

Here's another way to look at it. The ATR72 has 72 seats. Selling each seat for MYR38.68, nets Firefly MYR2784.96. For a 15 minute flight, that may not be too bad.

For me personally, I'm more interested in getting the low fare from an experience of a LCC point of view, having never flown a LCC in Asia. The ferry is actually similarly priced at MYR60, and which goes right into Georgetown, so it's not a clear cut choice on what mode of transport to take when priced similarly.