Air asia pass
 

Anyone know anyhting about the january 15th air asia pass???

http://www.airasia.com/th/en/book-wi...sean-pass.page

More details finally released. Could be a great deal, even with airport tax being additional. Amongst the caveats, the one that worries me:

Please take note:
•Credit can only be redeemed for your base fare.
•Any airport tax and add-ons such as check-in baggage, inflight meals, seats and travel insurance are to be paid separately.
•Each flight will need to be redeemed at least 14 days before departure.
•Each route can only be redeemed once using an AirAsia Asean Pass.
•Travellers must be 12 years old and above.
•Flight redemption is limited and subject to seat's availability, it may not be available on every flight or day, ie weekend, public holiday and school holiday.
•All GST and taxes are payable only upon flight redemption and not charged on AirAsia Asean Pass

As far as I can see, it's not possible to search for redeemable flights w/o already having the pass

[QUOTE=jacped;24370680]http://www.airasia.com/th/en/book-wi...sean-pass.page


•Each route can only be redeemed once using an AirAsia Asean Pass.
/QUOTE]

Also, is a "route" defined as city pair or is it as an arrival and destination? As in... Could the pass be used for:

DMK-HAN
HAN-DMK
DMK-SIN
SIN-DMK

The examples they give are unclear whether this would be allowed.

If you would want to go through the hasstle, you'd be better off in therms of credit flying SIN-HKT-DMK (1+1 credit) rather than SIN-DMK for 3 credits... (yes, you pay taxes twice... but better MYR20 in taxes than losing MYR50 in credit).

[QUOTE=BangkokTraveler;24398706]My read is the airline is attempting to prevent businessmen from using the pass as a shuttle, so in your example those are two city pairs, each of which can only be traveled once.

With an upcoming extended trip in May, of greater concern is the remark about availabilty. Hate to buy the pass and discover that only 25% of the flights on a given route are available.

This is a great idea...but there's so many restrictions.

I'm not sure what the taxes are like in these countries but the pass credits only cover base fare. You have to book 14 days in advance. No guaranteed availability. No do-overs? Kind of a bummer. When I read this the first time I was like "i don't even live there, but if it's good for 3-4 years I'll buy one right now". But I was bummed to see some routes were 3 credits as well as all the other restrictions.

If you're a backpacker planning a month long trip, this is great, cost certainty and you could book all your flights now and hop and jump all over. But for most other people, I kinda don't think so. Who needs to travel this much in a month and not repeat the same destination? Who needs to travel this much and none of it last minute?

I bought one, and I'll find a way to make it work to my advantage...

but the blackout dates are ridiculous.

Example: Singapore to Jakarta...almost no flights the 2nd half of December. If I had known that it might have swayed my decision

My reluctance to purchase the pass came from the 2 week prior purchase restriction, but the possibility of widespread blackouts making it even less desirable was in the back of my mind. Thanks for offering the first insight into this aspect.

Some good info on this reported here:
http://dreamtravelonpoints.com/2015/...ia-asean-pass/

[QUOTE=BangkokTraveler;24398706]Yes, you can use the pass as above, I have done similar. But you can't do any route, i.e. DMK-HAN a second time..

You can try to go SIN-KUL-CGK - better availability or purchase a difficult leg and use the pass for other flights. I posted more tips from using the pass under the link jacped shared...