Review of Thai Air Asia flight Bangkok → Phuket in Economy

Introduction

Hi there,

Up until the day of travel my original plan was to fly with Bangkok Airways to Koh Samui from Don Mueang, however due to the cancelation of the trip of my friend, I decided not to go ahead with it as I didn't fancy to be alone in Samui and opted to see an old friend of mine in Phuket who I met years ago and re-booked myself onto the first flight possible out of Don Mueang.

Given that I just wanted to get out of Bangkok and all airliners basically charged a similar hefty price (hefty for Thai domestic), I simply opted to book the first possibile flight out for around 3000 THB (75 EUR more or less) and the first bookable flight seemed to be Thai AirAsia.

Flight

Given that Krung Thep's traffic was absolute horrendous in the past few days I opted to grab myself an early ride to the airport with Grab Taxi, which costed me about 420 THB. This is actually still much more than one should or can pay, however if those are offered rides for 700-800 THB by their hotel, please reject it as it seems to become more frequent where hotels and taxi drivers are scamming tourists by overpricing the rides and benefiting both on the expense of you.

The ride itself took about 90 minutes to reach and the friendly taxi driver dropped me off in front of Terminal 2, which is being used for domestic departures.

As Don Mueang made some small adjustments to their drop off section by splitting Taxi's from general traffic, we now had to walk down first instead of entering right into the check-in area.

Given that I didn't have lunch yet and I was still planning to go to Koh Samui, I made my way to the upper floor where you can find a nice and cheap food court, which is usually quite busy, yet always has some seating available. Just be sure to grab yourself a card with some money on it before you order your food. The money left will be given back to you.

It's also here when I received my friend's notification about the cancelation and made me contact my friend in Phuket who was glad for me to be coming, so I took a bit for myself to scroll and book the flight I will be on right now.

Flight was booked and about an hour later with about 2 hours prior to my departure I made my way down again to check-in my bag.

Decided to use the self-check kiosk to grab a boarding pass and a baggage tag. Once I tagged my baggage, an AirAsia lady walked up to me telling me that the kiosks were not operative/valid for luggage and took it off my luggage. She kindly directed me to one of the counters. 

Not entirely sure why this option is not disabled for now, but hey, no rows at any counter, so it wasn't really that much of a bother.

So after my failed attempt with the self-service kiosk and the information screen just telling the general rows you need to be for your flight, I made myself to Row H only to be told by one of the ground attendants that my flight will need to go to Row J, so made myself over there and another ground attendant asked me about my flight before letting me continue.

It seems to be a bit counterproductive with the current system and perhaps the information screen should basically report the only row you're flight is suppose to use.

Security was busy, yet it went with an orderly pace and took not more than three to five minutes to clear.

Given that my flight would depart from Gate 84, I decided to pay a visit to Nok Air's lounge which I got access through via my Priority Pass. The good thing about many airports in Thailand is that Priority Pass has multiple options for you to use when visiting the major airports. Nok Air's lounge isn't particularly large as the photo below shows you the entire lounge, however it was very quiet and the seating was pretty comfortable, while being shielded off by screens from the main public.

The buffet in this awful yellowish colour gave you several hot and cold options. For drinks you could grab some soft drinks Juices, water, coffee & tea and ice was available too if you fancied it.

Some fruit and cakes were also available.

And some hot food options, which were mainly Thai options like Garlic Chicken, Joke (Thai Congee) and some other well-known Thai dishes.

With about 10 minutes to boarding, I made my way to my gate, which turned out to be a bus gate.

The flight was suppose to be delayed by about 30 minutes, yet boarding was called only five minutes past our scheduled departure time and was in respect to your zone. The ladies on the ground were checking if you were adhering to the zones and sent you back if you did not.

Today's flight would be performed by HS-CBJ, A 5.6 year old Airbus A320neo that has solely been flying for Thai AirAsia since October 2018 and is powered by two CFMI LEAP-1A26 engines and can carry up to 186 peoples separated into 144 regular seats & 42 hot seats.

Upon embarking the aircraft, we were kindly greeted by a very positive and cheerful flight attendant and made my way to seat 5F, which I was automatically assigned to and is suppose to be an hot seat. The difference between a regular and a hot seat on AirAsia's flight is that you basically get an extra inch of legroom.

My seat also came with a very excellent window view.

Literature you can find in your seat pocket contained of a safety card, sickbag, promotional card and a BoB magazine.

Boarding was completed only a few minutes past our scheduled departure time with most of the hot seats being empty. Those would later be occupied as people on the hot seats were spreading to create more space for each other. Travellers who did not obtain a hot seat and wanted to try this too were sent back to their regular seat by flight attendants, which is a good thing as it would be unfair for those who paid for it.

I guess the load for today's flight was about 75% and pushback was performed only 7 minutes past our scheduled departure and not 30 minutes like AirAsia notified us earlier by text and mail.

With a quick departure from 21L.

A quick right turn was engaged which gave me a good view of the airport.

Some bad weather is incoming.

Not much went on in flight other than that the flight attendants jumped into action to provide those with a meal who pre-booked them online followed by the Buy on Board service by the next crew, however given the short ride and that I already had my share in Bangkok Don Mueang, I did not opt for it. I don't think a lot of sales were made as it took them only ten minutes or so to be back in the front galley before announcing that they'll start their duty free too…. This also took not that long to be completed if someone even bothered to buy something.

The views were amazing though with the sunset and those tower cumulus clouds full of thunderstorms. 

Unfortunately sun set was almost done by the time we lined up for Runway 27 giving us an arrival time of just a minute late.

With a short ride of a single minute it was now time to disembark the aircraft and wait for our luggage, which took about five minutes for us to arrive.

The arrival terminal of Phuket is really something shitty to be fair and could do with some revamps. I simply made my way to one of those yellow kiosks and booked myself a taxi to Patong for about 800 THB.

Thanks for stopping by!