The good news is that AirAsia has just added BKK – REP to its ever growing list of routes the budget airliner services. The bad new is that Air Asia has just added BKK – REP to its ever growing list of routes the budget airliner services. Once the sole domain of Bangkok Airways, with AirAsia’s entry to flying this route visitors from Bangkok will now be able to fly to Siem Reap for about half of what it used to cost them. But to cash in on that savings, you’ll have to put up with AirAsia’s complete disregard for the comfort, travel schedule, health, well being, and dignity of its customers.

I’ve flown AirAsia before. Many times before. And bitched about all the things you have to put up with when flying with them too. Or trying to. Last time I manned up and decided to go with price over comfort their on-line booking system couldn’t figure out how to accept a VISA card as payment. Though it was AirAsia’s problem and not VISA, I still feel I owe VISA a thanks for saving me from yet another flight from hell. But with the allure of a direct flight at a cheap price dancing in my head, I thought I’d bite the bullet and check out what AirAsia could do for me when flying to Siem Reap. Big surprise, their only interest was in doing me.

When it comes to airlines, low cost means no frills. And AirAsia makes sure there is nothing frilly about your life. Starting at the airport. Your flight with them really isn’t BKK-REP, it’s DMK-REP – they fly out of the old Don Muang airport. Which, other than having already agreed to being a second class citizen, isn’t a problem as long as you are not connecting from a flight that landed at Suvarnabhumi. Or unless you forgot to tell your taxi which airport you needed to go to. On the plus side, they do fly to Siem Reap (and back, which you do need to check since this is AirAsia we are talking about) seven days a week. And at a respectable hour – the outbound flights leave at 10:20, with returning flights departing Siem Reap at 12:25. As for fares, when you fly with AirAsia, flexibility counts. Both in your travel schedule and in your standards of travel.

Wanting to get past their almost free introductory fare hype, I chose two dates in early October. And then looked at the fares for each day of that week. Tuesdays offered the best deal. Each way the cost was 670 baht. A nice addition to their on-line booking site is that they now compute the total fare – well, at least the addition of taxes and fuel charges – up front. So the total fare came to 3,408 baht. Though there may be additional charges still to come. Knowing AirAsia, I’m sure there are. But I couldn’t tell you. ‘Cuz the on-line system wouldn’t allow me to proceed further. It kept asking me to select the number of passengers, and no matter how many I selected it did not approve of my answer. Despite repeated attempts I was unable to book a ticket even if I had wanted to. You may have better luck. I just assumed the gods were looking over me and protected me from making a grievous life error.

No problemo. I had, at least, established a possibly full fare figure to compare with what the same flight on Bangkok Airways would run. Bangkok Airways flies out of Suvarnabhumi, which already made me feel better about myself. Bangkok Airways also gets bonus points for offering a lounge to all of its passengers, which if I fly with Noom, in his opinion, is the only way to fly. Bangkok Airways also offers five flights per day to choose from, which if you are connecting from some other destination makes life a lot easier. They had a comparable flight to AirAsia’s – one that landed 5 minutes earlier than AirAsia’s – which means getting to immigration before the poor souls whose bad karma put them on the AirAsia flight.

But you don’t always get what you pay for. Bangkok Airways roundtrip fare (including taxes etc., etc., etc.) ran a hefty 11,195 baht. 7,787 more than Air Asia. Which is about an additional $260 for the same one hour flight. You could take two bar boys with you and still have money left in your wallet at that fare. Assuming you could get AirAsia’s on-line booking service to sell you the tickets.

Bangkok Airways has had that route to itself and has always charged accordingly. In the past if you wanted to fly cheap, you had to fly into Phnom Penh and then take the 5 hour, $11 bus to Siem Reap. Now that there is competition, perhaps they will lower their fares. A bit. As badly as AirAsia sucks, it’s only a one hour flight. For $100 more, I’d gladly fly with Bangkok Airways. For $250, probably not.

The new competition for flying into Siem Reap is not going to be gentle to Bangkok Airways’ bottom line, even if they do hold on to a hefty portion of the market by coming up with a reasonable fare. Cambodia, undoubtedly, will benefit greatly. With the added number of touri who’ll decide the temples at Angkor Wat just became both less expensive and more convenient to visit, Siem Reap will flourish. And I’m not sure that is a good thing.

Low-cost airlines cater to low-cost travellers, the once bucolic town has already been over-run by the less than desirable vacationers over the last few years. A lot of the town’s charm will disappear thanks to the hordes who will be taking advantage of the low airfares offered by AirAsia. And with more and more touri choosing Siem Reap as a destination, you can expect prices in town for hotels, transpo, and food to soon be on the rise. Air Asia is a lot like WalMart; when they come into town the results are never a pretty sight. So if you haven’t been before, now is the time to visit Siem Reap. And if you can get AirAsia’s on-line booking system to sell you a ticket, you can do it for less than 1,000 baht if you grab one of their first 8,000 seats.

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