Airasia Hand Baggage Weight Limit Enforcement

[ovenman]

I flew from Kuala Lumpur to Chiang Mai today on AirAsia. When passing from the departure hall to the outbound immigrations queue, an AirAsia agent was weighing everybody's hand luggage with a manual scale. He made every passenger with a bag exceeding the 7 kilogram limit go back and check that bag. I've flown with AirAsia a lot since 2004 (almost one hundred flights) and I have never encountered this enforcement of the weight limit for hand luggage. Not sure if this is a new policy of consistently enforcing this weight limit, just a random enforcement of the limit, or something that only pertains to ground operations at KLIA.

Anybody else with similar recent experience...?

[tigerbeer]

I flew from Kuala Lumpur to Chiang Mai today on AirAsia. When passing from the departure hall to the outbound immigrations queue, an AirAsia agent was weighing everybody's hand luggage with a manual scale. He made every passenger with a bag exceeding the 7 kilogram limit go back and check that bag. I've flown with AirAsia a lot since 2004 (almost one hundred flights) and I have never encountered this enforcement of the weight limit for hand luggage. Not sure if this is a new policy of consistently enforcing this weight limit, just a random enforcement of the limit, or something that only pertains to ground operations at KLIA.

Anybody else with similar recent experience...?

last time my buddy came to CNX, he got checked as well. came here sometime in november last year.

can get bargain prices with AirAsia but be careful about the weight that you carry. they just looking to make more money. last time i flew to KL, me and my son didnt get any food to eat on the flight. two carts on their brand new spanking A300. we sat in the middle of the plane. so i asked the hostess for food, she said aint got any. so we're not allowed outside food and they dont carry enough food on board. she offered me congee, i told her to shove it up fernandez' ass.

oh another thing, they make it very clear now that they can deny passage to anyone who talks disrespectfully to workers at the counter. if on board the plane, they might have you arrested for harrasment. i guess they not very popular with their ######ed up restrictions.

can they be sued for not allowing outside food on board? and not serving enough on the flight?

taking the life jacket off the plane is an offense part, i can understand though.

[leisurely]

I don't understand the problem. You get what you pay for. We use Airasia a lot, probably monthly. None of the flights we have been on has been over an hour and a half. If you know you are flying, eat before you board. As for the weight, you know the rules.

[ovenman]

As for the weight, you know the rules.

I'm well aware of AirAsia's weight rules. I've never seen these rules enforced for carry-on bags and was simply wondering whether they had become more strict in general or if my experience yesterday was simply a one-off.

[TopChinese]

Jan 30, 2007

No response to complaint of unfair charge over excess baggage

I had a bad experience when travelling with my family on Air Asia recently. We have a son, who was 10 months old at the time. We knew we would be travelling with plenty of luggage, so I booked an adult fare for our baby which, I assumed, would entitle him to a seat and 15kg of baggage.

When we checked in at Phnom Penh, the supervisor refused to give us any baggage allowance at all for our son, on the basis that we should not have booked an adult seat since he is not one. She even went as far as to say that if we argued any further she would not allow us to board the plane. So we paid the excess baggage fee.

When I returned home, I wrote to Air Asia to complain. After seven days of no response, I wrote again. After a further seven days I wrote one last time and, to date, there has been no reply.

Don Bennett

Edited January 31, 2007 by TopChinese

[Bakuteh]

I flew from Kuala Lumpur to Chiang Mai today on AirAsia. When passing from the departure hall to the outbound immigrations queue, an AirAsia agent was weighing everybody's hand luggage with a manual scale. He made every passenger with a bag exceeding the 7 kilogram limit go back and check that bag. I've flown with AirAsia a lot since 2004 (almost one hundred flights) and I have never encountered this enforcement of the weight limit for hand luggage. Not sure if this is a new policy of consistently enforcing this weight limit, just a random enforcement of the limit, or something that only pertains to ground operations at KLIA.

Anybody else with similar recent experience...?

Don't think that is a new rule. The 7kg limit has always been there. Read the fine print in Air Asia's T&C.

As for consistently enforcing the hand luggage weight limit, again this is not so based on my experiences flying Air Asia out of KL, Bangkok, Hanoi, Phnom Penh and Chiangmai.

This manual weighing of luggage at the check-in counter is most probably random and when it is done, the experience could be rather unsettling. It has happened to me in Hanoi once in October but the next time 3 weeks ago, it was not repeated.

It appears that this random enforcement of the hand luggage weight limit (7kg) is down to your luck. One way out of any possible hassle is (if travelling with others) to ensure your hand luggage does not exceed 7kg (find a weighing machine somewhere!) and shove the rest of your stuff into your checkin luggage and to do a group checkin of all you and your friends' luggage.

[PhilHarries]

I tried to answer this one yesterday but the bluddy computer crashed halfway through (thank God for my BA in Anglo Saxon) and I couldn't be ar5ed starting over.

I have flown AirAsia several times now KL - BKK, last time was Xmas, and have never had my carry on baggage weighed, nor seen anybody else getting that treatment. So it's either a one off or a new policy, and I would treat it as that for the purposes of travelling with AirAsia, is the weigh scale on the check in belt accurate enough? IMO it's high time airlines more strictly enforced the rules regarding carry on baggage. Some people really take the p1ss and all too often the late boarders have to put up with their bag being under the seat in front. However all rules regarding carry on should be made clear, and any checks done, at check in but the fact that it was done post check in is enough to make anybody's blood boil particularly if there is a long queue.

I'm afraid that this plus other personal experiences and other correspondences make me fear that AirAsia are getting the big business syndrome where customer satisfaction is not a priority. OK they are a real cheap carrier but there's a limit to how much hassle the traveller will put up with. Or it may be that they are targetting predominantly Asian travellers who have lower expectations than us westerners, on some flights I have been the only white face, and will quietly put up with this sort of thing.

I, for one, will not travel AirAsia out of choice again. It's not the flight, once you are on the plane everything's fine, it's the LCCT here at KL that sucks big time.

My message to tigerbeer is "you didn't miss anything with the food", on one flight I bought a sandwich thinking they can't make too much of a hash of that. Wrong ! Eat at the terminal pre-departure is the best plan but at LCCT there's only that small cafe place once you are through passport control.

[ovenman]

I have flown AirAsia several times now KL - BKK, last time was Xmas, and have never had my carry on baggage weighed, nor seen anybody else getting that treatment. So it's either a one off or a new policy, and I would treat it as that for the purposes of travelling with AirAsia, is the weigh scale on the check in belt accurate enough? IMO it's high time airlines more strictly enforced the rules regarding carry on baggage.

True, but AirAsia have in many ways created these situations for themselves. I've witnessed any number of passengers checking in for previous AirAsia flights being told by the check-in agent that their checked bag was going to be overweight and to transfer stuff to their carry-on. They have never seemed to care in the past about the weight of carry-on bags, even though their stated policy has always been a limit of 7 kilograms

However all rules regarding carry on should be made clear, and any checks done, at check in but the fact that it was done post check in is enough to make anybody's blood boil particularly if there is a long queue.

This was especially annoying as I had already checked one bag. Had I known this would become an issue, I could have offloaded some extra weight from my carry-on into my other (already checked) bag and saved quite a bit on the overweight charge.

[Lancelot]

I flew from Kuala Lumpur to Chiang Mai today on AirAsia. When passing from the departure hall to the outbound immigrations queue, an AirAsia agent was weighing everybody's hand luggage with a manual scale. He made every passenger with a bag exceeding the 7 kilogram limit go back and check that bag. I've flown with AirAsia a lot since 2004 (almost one hundred flights) and I have never encountered this enforcement of the weight limit for hand luggage. Not sure if this is a new policy of consistently enforcing this weight limit, just a random enforcement of the limit, or something that only pertains to ground operations at KLIA.

Anybody else with similar recent experience...?

Don't think that is a new rule. The 7kg limit has always been there. Read the fine print in Air Asia's T&C.

As for consistently enforcing the hand luggage weight limit, again this is not so based on my experiences flying Air Asia out of KL, Bangkok, Hanoi, Phnom Penh and Chiangmai.

This manual weighing of luggage at the check-in counter is most probably random and when it is done, the experience could be rather unsettling. It has happened to me in Hanoi once in October but the next time 3 weeks ago, it was not repeated.

It appears that this random enforcement of the hand luggage weight limit (7kg) is down to your luck. One way out of any possible hassle is (if travelling with others) to ensure your hand luggage does not exceed 7kg (find a weighing machine somewhere!) and shove the rest of your stuff into your checkin luggage and to do a group checkin of all you and your friends' luggage.

Last Aug I flew to Clark in the Philippines from BKK. I had a large backpack and was one kilo over the checked baggage limit. My carry on was anpother small backpack, but under the limit. The Air Asia ticket counter lady just smiled and said watch your carrry on weight because you are a little heavy. I passed through KL's Low Cost Terminal with no problems.

I also flew around the Philippines on Cebu Air (the best low cost carrier in SE Asia IMHO) again no problems at all.

Returning to BKK in October, I flew on Tiger Airways via Singapore. No check in problems at Clark. When I departed Singapore, the Tiger Airways representative at check in told me I was one kilo over and made me pay the outrageous rate of 30 SG$ per kilo for excess baggage charge. While boarding the airplane, I noticed many Chinese tourists with HUGE carry on bags, certainly exceeding th 7 kilo limit.

Had I been thinking, I would have refused the charges, grabbed a large poly bag from a shop and stuffed one kilo of checked luggage in to it.

Low cost carriers can save you money, but they will ding you with extra "Fees" at evey opportunity.

Lance

[kornflique]

So far, nobody has checked my item and the weight.

But I believe, everybody agree that Air Asia Excess Baggage rules sucks.

[bruce3404]

I flew BKK-CNX-BKK in mid-January and there was no enforcement of the carry-on weight limitation in either direction, but we made sure to weigh our bags before leaving home just in case.

[SmokeandIce]

I've flown Air Asia about 6 roundtrips over the last two years and have never had any problems with checked or carry-on luggage, but I don't bring much when traveling within Asia. Although I do feel the AirAsia environment is a bit cheap, you cannot beat the prices - just keep your expectations low. I just booked a ticket from Bangkok to Penang roundtrip and TG wanted 8000 plus THB when AirAsia was only 4000 plus. For an hour to an hour and a half, I will always choose the lowest, safe choice...transpacific is a different story.