invisible

Topic headline is self explanatory. If you decide to fly scoot, make sure that it is OK for you if you end up at the destination 60h (or more) later than the scheduled arrival time.

Yesterday came back to Singapore from short weekend trip to Kuching. There was a flight from Kuching directly to Singapore via Scoot, but instead we decided to fly to (and from) Johor and come back via Woodlands. Sure enough, was right thing to do - when we got to the airport, looked at the scheduled flights and saw Scoot flight to Singapore with status 'canceled'. That was the last flight on that day.

clubeurope

invisible

60h is a reference of their latest record. https://milelion.com/2019/01/05/we-n...k-about-scoot/

Cancelations do happen. It is the way this airline treating passengers in cases of delays and cancellations is the beyond borderline.

kaffir76

And again, how do u know how the pax of the cancelled flight were treated?
It seems that the flight on 18 Mar was cancelled in both directions.

I'm not sure about other pax, but I would not fly into Senai airport & bus or take a taxi to SG.
It defeats the purpose of having & living in SG/Changi - and yes I know you can save some $$ if u fly in/from Senai

p/s you could have posted this in the SQ forum

invisible

Exactly.

You would not, but I did and will again.

Two reasons are enough: AirAsia has three flights per day from JHB, and there was only one flight from Scoot directly from KCH, which as you already noticed, was canceled.
Secondly - cost. Taking Grab from home to Woodlands and from CIQ to Senai and back, plus JHB-KCH-JHB ticket was the same price as one way SIN-KCH on Scoot. Actually, JHB-KCH-JHB ticket was RM120. Now multiply this by 4 (number of people) and you will get an idea.

And no, I don't want to start looking for what to do when last flight is canceled, and moreover - relay on Scoot or trust them, especially based on their past track record, with a group of 4 people who need to be in their offices at 10AM next morning.

cowie

I get where you are coming from. I'd avoid Scoot too for the appalling way it handles passengers when the plane goes tech.

But I won't go as far as to consider flying out of Senai as an immediate next-best solution. We drive between Singapore and KL about 4-6 times a year, and depending on your luck that land border crossing can be a real PITA. Aren't there several daily direct nonstop SIN-KCH-SIN flights on AirAsia?

invisible

Well, crossing both borders at 9AM on Saturday morning took two hours and 1.5h was standing in line at Malaysian side. I did not know that this week is school holidays, otherwise we'd be there an hour earlier.

There was no AirAsia flight on Monday, otherwise I would take it. AirAsia reduced number of flights from SIN since pax departure tax increase last year and moved some flights to JHB.

To put it differently - if I have a choice between one flight to/from Singapore and that flight is Scoot and three flights to/from Senai with AirAsia, I would choose AirAsia without thinking.

cowie

I'm glad it worked out for you in this instance. That is, you had traded two extra hours each way to fly on AirAsia and avoided a more massive delay (and other inconveniences) had you picked Scoot instead.

However, I am unsure if your suggestion to fly out of Senai in order to avoid Scoot out of Changi will render most travellers better off in most circumstances. Things to consider:

1. The odds are that Scoot will be on time (they average about 80 per cent on the A320 and 65 per cent on the B787, see https://www.flyscoot.com/en/on-time-performance) but you are guaranteed, in effect, a "delay" of at least two hours each way on AirAsia due to the extra travel time.

2. Sometimes the Causeway just jams up, adding hours to immigration clearance time. Often you can predict and avoid this, e.g. don't travel during the school holidays. But sometimes you just can't. Staffing levels, increased security due to "terror threats", random accidents shutting off entire lanes, alignment of the sun and the moon, etc. You might miss your outbound flight from Senai because of this. As I mentioned before, we cross the border by car often enough to know roughly what days/hours to avoid, yet once in a while we've suffered three or four hour jams on what is normally a 30 minute wait.

Having said all that, I'd avoid Scoot if there are other workable solutions (travel insurance, buffering for delays, one-stop flights via KUL, etc), but for these reasons I won't consider Senai as an alternative. The land border crossing just throws up too many unknowns. But YMMV.

invisible

I think we are not discussing the same stuff. You are saying about 'generic' Scoot flights on any route.

I am discussing the situation when there is only one flight available on the route and that flight is via Scoot. If this is the case, I will not fly that route/flight or will make sure that having 24h or more delays in either direction are acceptable for me. Which, for our case, was not an option and for such a case, I choose to fly from/to Senai.

I crossed the Woodlands-CIQ border >50 times via bus/by foot in last seven years. I knew how much drive time and how much it costs to get to JHB from CIQ on Grab. As I mentioned, the only thing what I did not know was about school holidays, otherwise I would be on Woodlands checkpoint before 8:15AM to avoid huge line at immigration on Malaysian side which starts to form after 8:30AM on Saturdays.

When you have all this information, which is based on experience - one can make an informed decision.

jbfield

invisible

Correct, but the caveat is that train tickets open 3 weeks before departure and if it is 9AM on Saturday morning you want to cross towards Johor, it takes 2 minutes time (actually measured from HWZ forums) tickets to be gone.

So to summarize - everything is doable and manageable as long as you have enough information and know what to do in which order.

YuropFlyer

I'll second invisible on this.

Flying to/from Senai definitely isn't as bad as it sounds.

First of all, the more pax in your group, the less will the Grab ride actually be per pax. I'm too lazy to check with my Grab app right now, but unless I'm completely mistaken the fare from/to Senai is less than 20S$! Which is about what you'd pay in SIN too from/to downtown.

If you manage to get a ticket on the Woodlands-JB (or vice versa) train, the whole transfer/immigration process isn't that bad either. Sure, it adds some time vs. flying off Changi/arriving from Changi, but I'd say not more than about 1hr extra. Especially when flying off Senai, you can cut it relatively tight, and on the return, taking an extra 30min safety won't break the bank - worst case, to some shopping at JB station while waiting

For a destination within Malaysia, you'll not have to pass immigration on arrival, too (counts for both ways) so that makes the process in Senai easier too.

I don't know the train timetable in my head, but taking a train 1.5hrs after arrival should be safe coming from Senai, and taking a train from Woodlands about 2hrs before departure from Senai. That's roughly 1hr lost each way.

If the savings on the airfare are like 100S$++, and you're several pax in your group, that becomes quite significantely, worth the hassle.

Flying a LCC off SIN or from Senai isn't really much different..

invisible

It is actually half of that RM33 one way from CIQ to the airport and RM30 from the airport to CIQ. Cars are just parked there, no waiting time involved. With 4 people, it is less than SGD $5 spent per person on taxi on both directions.

Correct, with a single caveat - this is true for Peninsular Malaysia. For East Malaysia, due to their unique status, you still need to pass passport control. But if you fly to KLIA, then you can avoid dreaded 1h wait at passport control which happens from time to time.

In addition to fares which are obviously more expensive from SIN, then there is airport departure tax which for SIN is like 8x-10x more (don't remember the actual number) compared when flying from Senai.

My cheapest, non-mistake revenue flight ever was JHB-KLIA on AirAsia and I paid RM30 for it.

Did any of you ever manage to pay for less than USD $8 for a flight?

YuropFlyer

evergrn

I'm thinking of flying Scoot, NRT->TPE, to connect to an Air Canada flight next summer. If they're on time, we're looking at ~4.5hr layover which is more than ample time even allowing for immigration, bag pick-up, check-in, etc (assuming no interline/through-check).

However, Scoot's website seems to indicate that they define refund/rebook-provoking schedule change as >4hrs of retiming. If the current flight gets pushed out by >3hrs, we are in trouble and it appears that technically Scoot will not do anything.

Do you guys think it's not worth the risk? How often does Scoot change flight times, and are they by-the-book when it comes to decision to help / not help you?