The Jakarta-Denpasar (Bali) sector connects the country's two largest airports, and as you might expect the competition is fierce.
AWAIR is one of the newer entrants on the scene, having only started up in 2004, but they've quickly distinguished themselves from pack with two features: they're an affiliate of Asia's largest LCC, Malaysia's Air Asia, and as they piggyback on Air Asia's website they're the only one with a functional online booking engine. Add well-timed flights (Friday evening in, Sunday evening out) and a few seats left at short notice, and with a visiting colleague in tow I punched in my Mastercard and booked seats. The return trip came to about a million rupes (US$100), close to Air Asia's maximum prices, but not much more than what GA charges for a one-way.
QZ7518 CGK-DPS B737-300 free seating
I arrived from SIN on SQ, made it through immigration and customs in just over 30 minutes (very fast by CGK standards), and having been advised that the shuttle bus was useless I headed straight to the taxi stands for the hop over to Terminal 1A. It was pouring rain and there was a huge queue for Silver Bird cabs; what with a 40% hike in fuel prices scheduled for the next day, most cabs were queueing up to fill up on the last day of cheap fuel, and the lines into the petrol stations outside the airport snarled up traffic all the way to the arrivals hall. I did a round of the normal taxi queues, with lots of mercenary cabbies lounging around, all replying "50", "50", "50" to my queries; 50,000 rupiah (US$5), a normal fare to central Jakarta (30 km away), but not for Terminal 1A (500m). A tout with an airport ID tag pulled out the string towards me -- "Terminal 2, you! Terminal 1, me!" -- and, with this winning spiel and a discount to 40, I caved in and hopped on board. He was a friendly guy, complementing me on my pathetic Indonesian and asking me why I'm not married yet, and even gave me my change from a 50.
Terminal 1 and Terminal 2, being built by the same company at the same time, are identical in structure; however, it's fairly obvious which one gets the upkeep money. I met my colleague, checked in without problems (as in Air Asia's non-hub airports, boarding cards are paper slips with a stamped flight number and a hand-scribbled sequence number), and headed up towards the gates. The air-con was broken, half the lighting fixtures were broken, the gate displays were blank or showing static, and locals squatted on the "Do Not Sit" air-con vents and smoked
kretek clove cigarettes under the "No Smoking" signs. Time moved as slowly as the stagnant air in the hall. Flight announcements were sporadic but incomprehensibly distorted in both
Bahasa Indonesia and English; eventually, as the time approached we headed towards gate 4 to wait.
The gate area was, fortunately, equipped with air-con and seating too. Another burst of garble and a queue formed at the door, so we joined in -- until I noticed that our tickets looked distinctly different from the rest.
"Pak, ke Denpasar?" "Tidak, ke Banjarmasin!". I have always wanted to visit Borneo, but maybe not today. This repeated two more times with a flight to Palembang (Sumatra) and the even more deviously named
Balikpapan (also Borneo), but we dodged the traps. The scheduled time of departure approached and passed, but still no boarding call for us, or even a plane at the gate. Ladies in Air Asia's shade of screaming red were standing around at the desk, so I asked how much delay and was told 15-20 minutes. Lo and behold, 15 minutes later the plane did show up, and a mere 10 minutes later we were walking across the tarmac into a familiar-looking 737.
As I'd hoped, AWAIR (which, incidentally, is pronounced either "ah-wear" or "A-W-ayer" depending on who you ask) proved a carbon copy of Air Asia in all but name. Slighty old but impeccable clean 737-300s with leather seats, tight but not impossible seat pitch, more pretty ladies in eyeball-searing red hawking drinks and snacks (10k for a Coke), and that was about it. The flight was packed to the gills. We left half an hour behind schedule, made up around 10 minutes during the 1:30 flight, and landed at a wet and humid DPS just before midnight local time.
Bali was beautiful. We lazed around on Seminyak's gorgeous beach, poked around local restaurants and clubs, checked out neighborhood temples, had a pair of eyeglasses stolen by a mercenary monkey who blackmailed us for a piece of fruit, and were shopping in Kuta Square when Jemaah Islamiyah attempted to assassinate us. This being Indonesia, nobody had the slightest clue what was going on, so after hearing that the shopping center was evacuated because a restaurant's gas cylinder exploded, we shrugged and headed back to our villa. What had actually happened was unveiled to us only later, when my phone started beeping with voicemail and text messages containing variations of "OMG!!!1!1".
Life the next day went on as normal, although both tourists and Balinese did seem to be a little subdued compared to the previous day. I never did, and I still don't, understand why people spaz out so much about terrorism, with every single Western country hysterically bleating travel advisories about Indonesia ever since 9/11. Bali has 3.4 million people (plus tens if not hundreds of thousands of tourists at any given time) and 5600 sq.km. of land, 1.4% and 0.5% of the Indonesian total respectively. The island has had two (2) incidents in the past 40 years. Do the math; I'm
far more worried about, say, the lunatic cabbies overtaking on blind corners.
QZ7519 DPS-CGK B737-300 free seating
In proper scaremongering style, BBC showed scenes of what were described as airport chaos, so the next day we headed to the airport a good two hours before our scheduled flight... only to find a near-deserted domestic terminal. DPS is built from the same rather unexciting mold as CGK, but better maintained; the gate displays still don't work -- or, to be more specific, they all display '9600 Baud Cybercom Ltd' as the next flight -- but at least there was one functional big LED display, and air-con and lighting were also sufficient. DPS also gets bonus points for the aquaria with googly-eyed fish above the men's urinals.
Tonight's flight, the last out of DPS, was on time. A few JAL jumbos were sitting on the tarmac, evidently evacuating the ever-panicky Japanese who make even American risk assessment look sensible, although at least they got rid of that pesky country-invading habit after the 1940s. BBC's implications to the contrary, there were even a few couple of seats left, and the flight itself was even less eventful as drink service was dropped in favor of letting everyone sleep,
Verdict: Lived up to my expectations, and thanks to Air Asia's backing easily the most competent of Indonesia's LCCs. I would not hesitate to fly them again, although I would never use them (or any other LCC) if I had a remotely tight onward connection.