Air Delay-sia

Yesterday I was just dreaming how it would be like diving in the Lembeh Straits. Macro Heaven. Muck diving mecca. Well, it was supposed to be another 21 days till I finally get to see Manado. I first heard of this wonderful diving heaven from Ben, my OWD instructor. He invited me to join them that year (2004) but alas the trip was during the fasting month. Plus the flight arrangements is not that straight forward. KL Singapore and then Manado... something like that. It would cost me about RM1K at least for the travelling alone.

Therefore, when Air Asia finally launch KL Mando I was absolutely elated. I booked my flights for this coming May (9 months in advance); booked my leave and informed my colleagues and then started dreaming of frogfishes, seahorses, nudibranches, pipefishes etc etc etc....

And then, this morning I got a frantic call from Yanni, our dive organiser. "Lynn, please check your flight details- apparently some people got bumped off the 1st May flight and only arriving in Manado late night on the 2nd".

Hmm... I thought. Airasia would usually send a text message or email if there any changes... I won't be affected. But then listening to Yanni's voice I decided to check. Surprise...surprise.... Changes...changes...changes....

Instead of flights on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays (and two flights on each day) they changed it to Tuesday and Saturday ONLY!!! Plus the flights arrive at night!


Then I went into my annoyed frenzy mode. Options: Stick with what they have given us means only two days of diving....and after 5 years of dreaming...DAMN YOU AIRASIA!!!
And not just that, the dates was chosen because of the long weekend, 1st is a public holiday (therefore I only need to take 2 days leave)

But then, going so far and only seeing it for 2 days is such a waste... Today, I may have used up my RM75 phone charges quota... teleconferencing, info seeking blah..blah..blah.... Finally, decided - extend stay and change return flight to the 7th. It was Merman and my plan... thank god we are also buddies ;). When everyone heard of our plan they decided to follow.

And then frenzy calls to Air Asia Call Centre. Merman got all done in a synch. He had a knowledgeable call centre staff that briefed him on the situation. And then changed our flights without any added cost. But our posse was not so lucky.

We managed to exposed the inadequacies of the AA call centre staffs with our repeated calls. Many of the staffs were not even briefed on the change of flights and thus blamed the customer for trying to make changes. Many did not know that AA only fly twice a week to Manado suggesting to us other unavailable dates. Some were obviously rude trying to push away the customer for making their job harder. Hello you are in the customer service department, that is your job!!! The faint hearted got bullied (Combat...so dissapointing, mana ke machoan of the personal trainer ni?) whereas others got mad and made the AAA personnel suffer.

In the end, the whole group is going back two days later...hahaha extra 3 dives ;)

As for Air Asia... MAJOR DISSAPOINTMENT!!!!!!!