Asia Airports News
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My recent trip to Malaysia’s Tioman Island has resulted in a lot of new content. Firstly, I’ve added new ‘mini’ guides to Tioman and Seletar airports.
Secondly, I’ve started to add some brief reviews of airlines, starting with Jetstar Asia. The reviews are designed to give you some basic details, like luggage allowance, as well as impressions on seat comfort, food, etc. More will be added in the near future.
Did you know Singapore has more than one airport? Most people don’t; they only know Changi. Seletar is Singapore’s second airport. It is, in all respects, the exact opposite of Changi. While Singapore’s main airport is huge, Seletar is small, and only regularly serviced by a single airline: Berjaya Air. Changi is full of shops and restaurants selling just about everything you could want, while Seletar has a couple of vending machines.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Seletar. After all, with only one airline, it wouldn’t make sense to have too many shops. Berjaya, on the other hand, definitely hasn’t impressed me. When I booked today’s flight a month or more ago, the itinerary was issued with a departure time of 12:00 noon. Since there’s no flight from Bangkok that will get me to Singapore in time for a noon connection, I arranged to fly in last night and stay in a hotel.
I arrived at Seletar around 9:30 for my "noon" flight. There was nobody at the check-in counters, but it was early, so I took a seat in the waiting room. The time passed 10:00, then 11:00 and still nobody at the counters. By this time there were several other people waiting for the same flight. Someone finally called Berjaya’s office in Kuala Lumpur, and was told that the flight time had been changed to 3:05 pm.
Oh well, it gives me time to write this up. It would be nice if there was some Internet available here, so I could post it.
I’m back in Suvarnabhumi airport, on my way to Singapore, then on to Tioman. I’m glad I got here. Word is spreading around Bangkok that the "red shirts" are enlisting taxis to their cause, to block all the roads in Bangkok. Because of this, I left home even earlier than I really needed to, in case there was a problem on the roads to the airport. In reality, there were still plenty of taxis around to take my money, and almost no traffic to the airport.
In fact, I got here so early that the check-in counter for my Jet Star Asia flight wasn’t opened yet. Fortunately, it wasn’t a long wait. It did give me time to look around and see that the airport is all ready for the Songkran onslaught of travelers. The Thai counters have extra long queuing lines set up and there are added Thai style decorations, which probably have to do with the ASEAN summit as well as the holiday. I just wonder if the Songkran hoards will show up or not. Between the economy and the political unrest, I wonder if people will really travel much this year, or hunker down at home. The airport is certainly a bit more quiet than I’ve seen it in some time.
At immigration, the officers are decked out in brightly colored Hawaiian print shirts, but I don’t see too many smiles. I’m not sure I’d be smiling either, if I had to wear those shirts and work through the holidays.
Since I’m flying Jet Star Asia this trip, there’s no Thai lounge access, but I am comfortably ensconced in the King Power lounge. This is another one of those "secret" lounges that nobody knows about, including a lot of King Power members. If you enroll as a member of King Power’s free loyalty program at their duty free mall near the Victory Monument, one of the perks is access to this lounge in the international departures area. It’s not as nice as the airline lounges – and the food is particularly sparse – but it’s a comfortable place to sit and type, which is very hard to come by in Bangkok’s airport.
The wireless Internet doesn’t seem to be working, but there are a couple of computers to use off in a corner. They seemed to work okay, and curiously, there’s a nicely printed (in Thai) copy of the cyber crimes act placed next to each PC.
I’ll probably have to leave the lounge soon, since I don’t think potato chips is going to be an adequate dinner for me, and there’s no in-flight meal on Jet Star Asia unless you pay for it. Still, I’m looking forward to flying with them again. I was impressed with them the first time I used the airline a year or so ago, so I’m anxious to see if that was a fluke or not.
More from Singapore, maybe.