Jetstar Asia – My Company made me fly with them

I have nothing against low budget airlines; in fact I use them all the time, but after a recent flight I have to say that Jetstar Asia does not rank highly.

The low cost airline is based in Singapore and has a fleet of four Airbus 320s. The airline’s initial funding came from Qantas (49%), the Singapore government's Temasek Holdings (Private) Limited (19%) and two Singaporean businessmen, Tony Chew (22%) and FF Wong (10%).

It flies a number of routes including Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Phuket, Pattaya, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Pattaya, Jakarta, Surabaya and Manila.

While the baggage limit is reasonable at 20kg and there is assigned seating you have to pay through the nose if you want to eat or drink anything on the plane (I smuggled both snacks and booze onto my return flight having been caught out by a number of Gin and Tonics upon departure).

My main complaint about the airline was its understaffing. A long time flyer I try my best to be as patient and polite to the staff as possible but I still get angry at their lack of training and complete undersupply.

During my departure from Singapore’s Changi Airport the Jetstar check in counters had the misfortune of complete computer failure. This meant that all check in was done manually and extremely slowly.

This would have not been so bad if the fact that half of the plane’s passengers decided to be very Asian and ignore the commonly accepted practice of waiting in line instead of pushing to the front of the queue and sticking their passports and tickets into the face of anybody official looking.

It took nearly 40 minutes before the check-in staff rectified the situation by telling them all to get back in line or piss off.

After an hour of queuing I managed to keep my place with a near constant stream of utterings varying from, “Oh no you’re not” to “Get back in line behind me you muppet”.

I also used my baggage trolley to maximum effect causing some serious damage to a number of people’s heels, toes, feet and legs.

Living in Asia for some time now I am used to this type of queuing practice so was not that badly put out but what really irked me is that all the passengers were told that the flight would leave on time as scheduled despite the fact that we were still checking when the flight should have finished boarding.

A mad dash through immigration and customs led to me getting on the plane just in time for the doors to shut behind me.

Despite reassurances from every member of the check-in and flight crew that the flight would not be delayed we ended up sitting on the runway for nearly an hour and a half while they loaded the bags, then unloaded them for exceeding the weight limit.

Despite the queuing mayhem, the fact that a delay was blatantly going to happen and that the time wasted sitting on the plane could have been better spent shopping or drinking what really annoys me most is that my company has booked me to fly with Jetstar again next month.

Argh!!!!