Air Ticket Tale

Today I went to Malaysia Airline (MAS) to purchase a one way ticket from Penang to Singapore, for the return trip I chose the low-price carrier: Air Asia, which will depart from Johor Bahru. Online the quoted price for MAS was RM433. The reason I picked MAS was it is a direct flight to Singapore while Air Asia will have to go through Johor Bahru, then take a bus to another bus station in Johor, and catch one more bus to enter Singapore. I want to make sure I can arrive Singapore on time by reducing these intermediate hops that I have to jump through.

Since my credit card cannot be used online, I went to buy the tickets physically. The place where both airlines exist is the airport. There, I was quoted the price of RM395 by MAS, but the time was much later than what I desire. Upon further inquiry, the MAS officer on duty just asked me to patron Singapore Airline. What amazes me was the price of SingAir was even cheaper: RM381! Since AirAsia was quoting me RM240, so adding hundred something more and get SingAir isn't too bad a deal, I got the ticket on the spot.

A sane company will price web purchases much cheaper because it is really cheaper to operate a website than staffing a counter. You may conjecture that the higher price is due to the need to cover credit card charges, well, I used credit card at the SingAir counter also, so this factor is out.

A thing to note is when I got my AirAsia ticket, it was priced RM50 more than the online price, well, this is fair and expect. All I can blame is the crappy bank that issued my credit card (Southern Bank, if you really want to know).

Here you go, the differences between a GLC (Government-Linked Company) of Malaysia Airline, and the lonely ranger, AirAsia. Now I have a much better picture of why our government is always losing money.