AirAsia Flight Pass is Here! (The AirAsia Hopper)

Originally this deal got passed around as a kind of a pass with “unlimited” flying for 2 months. While it’s not exactly true, you can get as many as 20 flights in 2 months with this pass, a seriously good deal if you have the time and interest.

The “hopper” term, if you’re not familiar, is a series I do where I try to make crazy routes to see tons of places using few enough miles that you could fly the entire route from one credit card bonus. But this would be my first “hopper” post on a cash ticket.

First thing is first. I want to explain that the ticket isn’t just an unlimited travel pass as others have said. The way it actually works is that you get a certain number of “credits” that you can use in a certain number of days. It’s kind of like frequent flyer miles. For example, for $160 you can get 10 credits which allows you to fly for 30 days. But flights cost 1 or 3 credits, most of them costing 1 credit.

So at best you can do 10 flights with the 10 credit plan, and 20 flights with the 20 credit plan.

But the catch is that they’ve made most of the routes available with 1 flight credit a dead end. Like you can fly Bangkok to Hanoi for one credit, but the only Hanoi destination available for 1 credit is Bangkok.

So what I’ll do in this post is first explain in detail how the deal works and the catches. And then come up with routes that connect 10 destinations without doubling back or having to pay 3 credits to go somewhere new. For example, I would start in Hanoi or unfortunately leave it out, as there are a number of destinations available for 1 credit.

 

AirAsia Pass Plans:

• For $160 you get 10 credits to use in 30 days of travel.
• For $290 you get 20 credits to use in 60 days of travel.

Your 30/60 days starts when you take your first flight! That’s key. In fact, you don’t even have to choose the name of the person with the pass until you take your first flight.

The bad things:

• Flights need to be booked 14 days in advance
• Each route can only be redeemed once
• You need to pay airport taxes
• No cancels/refunds of credits

My guess is that they don’t want business travelers buying this and repeating the same route over and over when they would have been a regular customer. My guess is that a route can be flown each way. Otherwise you could get into Laos on AirAsia and wouldn’t be allowed out on AirAsia.

 

Pricing the credits.

Flights are either 1 credit or 3, which is simple. Well, except that the only way to know how much your route will cost in credits is to look at a list of routes. Basically, longer routes are more expensive.

Find the route prices here.

 

Airport Taxes

Airport taxes aren’t that bad though. Departing Bangkok can cost $20. Although entering another country may cost money, entering Myanmar costs another $18. A little bit of digging shows that the range of costs will be $15 to $45 depending on the route. Most routes being close to $20.

Let’s just assume that every route will average out to $20. That’s 10 flights with an extra $20 in airport taxes. Not a lot of money but another $200 per 10 flights to consider. Of course, if you use more of your credits on longer flights, you’d have less flights and less airport taxes.

 

AirAsia Hopper

Obviously they are encouraging my kind of hopper style routing. They won’t let me fly the route more than once, so I need a… round-the-Asia ticket. I’m going to put together a list of interesting routes available for 1 credit and then piece some things together and see what happens.

• Bali -> Badung, Yogyakarta
• Siem Reap -> Bangkok
• Mandalay/Yangon -> Bangkok
• Kota Kinabalu -> Cebu,
• Hanoi -> Bangkok
• Sandakan -> Kota Kinabalu
• KL -> Banda Aceh, padang, Saigon, Singapore
• Singapore -> Langkawi, Phuket

Wow, not a lot of that connects. I think they’ve designed this well. Almost everything leads to a dead end in terms of staying within 1 credit. If I fly Bangkok to Hanoi… I have to use 3 credits to go anywhere else.

Start in Burma, in either Mandalay or Yangon and lets just see how it goes..

 

Examples of the “AirAsia Hopper”

Puerto Princesa -> Manila  -> Cebu -> Kota Kinabalu -> Kuching -> KL -> Medan -> Bangkok -> Mandalay -> Bangkok -> Hanoi

I put this as my first example because it’s the one that actually touches the most places I’ve never been. I’d maybe try to squeeze in Banda Aceh somehow too. But instead of flying Kuching to KL, I’d probably fly to Johor Bahru and then open-jaw to KL to get to Medan, or something like that.

 

Bali -> Bandung -> Singapore -> Phuket/Krabi -> Chiang Mai -> Bangkok -> Ho Chi Minh City -> KL -> Langkawi -> Penang -> Medan

 

Mandalay -> Bangkok -> Chiang Mai -> Surat Thani -> KL -> Sandakan/Tawau -> Kota Kinabalu -> Kuching -> Singapore -> Langkawi -> Krabi

 

Hanoi -> Bangkok -> Siem Reap / Phnom Penh -> KL -> Medan -> Penang -> Langkawi -> Singapore -> Kuching -> Kota K -> Sandkan/Tawau

 

Hanoi -> Bangkok -> Phuket -> Singapore -> Langkawi -> Penang -> Medan -> KL -> Ho Chi Minh City -> Bangkok -> Siem Reap

 

Buying the 20 credits (for $290)

It’s gotta be impossible to come up with a route that is 20 flights that all touch different cities. So I’m going to go ahead and assume the best use of the 20 credit version is not skip the places you really want to see. For example the only way to get from Palawan (Puerto Princesa) to some place not in the Philippines.

Although, you could use it to have better routes, I still could attempt to make a really long chain. Here’s what it would look like to hit most every place:

• Puerto Princesa -> Manila = 1 point
• Manila -> Cebu = 1 point
• Cebu -> Kota Kinabalu = 1 point
• Kota Kinabalu -> Bali = 3 points
• Bali -> Bandung = 1 point
• Bandung -> Singapore = 1 point
• Singapore -> Langkawi = 1 point
• Langkawi -> Penang = 1 point
• Penang -> Medan = 1 point
• Medan -> KL = 1 point
• KL -> Krabi/Phuket = 1 point
• Krabi/Phuket -> Bangkok = 1 point
• Bangkok -> Chiang Mai = 1 point
• Chiang Mai -> Surat Thani = 1 point
• Surat Thani -> Bangkok = 1 point
• Bangkok -> Mandalay  = 1 point
• Mandalay -> Bangkok = 1 point
• Bangkok -> Hanoi = 1 point

You could skip Mandalay or Hanoi to go to Siem Reap. And another place I would be going to is Banda Aceh purely so I can get to “Pulau Weh”.

 

Taxes

Looking exactly one month out.

Bali -> Bandung -> Singapore -> Phuket/Krabi -> Chiang Mai -> Bangkok -> Ho Chi Minh City -> KL -> Langkawi -> Penang -> Medan

• $10.24 – 40.21
• $5.83 – 15.48
• $27.19  – 16.80
• $5.66 – 37.09
• $5.05 – 14.09
• $21.47 – 18.10
• $25.50 – 22.50
• $2.50 – 11.10
• $2.50 – 10.82
• $7.21 – 19.14

$113.15 in taxes.

But how much would you have paid if you bought these flights a month out, at their cheapest? I decided to look up all the flights and see if the value is much more that $160.

$205.33 would have been the regular price for these flights at their cheapest. Now why would you pay $45 to lock yourself into AirAsia? Well, because it’s still the cheapest airline most of the time and the cheapest way to fly these routes. However, you can also book your flight at least 14 days out, when flights would be more expensive. So you could make relatively last minute plans (which I like).

Also, know that these flights are all looking in March which is off-peak season. In summer when these flights are full, this could save you a lot more than $45!

And also, there are more expensive routes. The average flight here was $20 pre tax and many of the longer flights are more expensive.

 

Category 1 & 2 hotels on the way

Truthfully, this could be an entire post but most of these routes are hitting tons of incredibly cheap hotels in terms of points that are still luxury hotels.

Examples

• Kota Kinabalu has category 1 Hyatt and SPG
• Kuching has a category 1 Hilton
• KL has a category 2 Hilton
• Johor Bahru has a category 1 Hilton
• Lombok has a category 2 SPG
• Yogyakarta has a category 1 Hyatt
• Bandung has a category 1 Hyatt
• Medan has a category 2 (JW) Marriott
• Chiang Mai has a category 2 SPG
• Chiang Rai has a category 2 SPG
• Siem Reap has a category 2 SPG
• Krabi has a category 1 IHG
• Phuket has a category 2 IHG
• Bangkok has a category 2 IHG
• Hanoi has a category 2 SPG

These are the ones obvious to me and that I could think of, but I’m sure there are certainly more. But everything I listed above has included notable hotels that I’ve thought about staying in or likely have.

 

Conclusion

The more I look at the deal the more I’m torn. Air Asia flights can already be had for extremely cheap. But on the other hand… some of these routes look really fun.

If I were to do it, I would probably fly Bali to Yogyakarta and then get a cheap flight from Yogyakarta to Singapore.  In fact I did that exact same route last year on Air Asia and if I recall I got a flight for $10 to $20, but with this deal they want 3 credits to book the flight. So I might fill in a couple of gaps with paid flights.

Since I’ve already been to KL, Phuket, Bangkok, and Bali each multiple times, I think I would try to do a route to hit new places: Philippines, Borneo, inland Myanmar, Hanoi, and Sumatra.

Good deal? Well, certainly will save you money. Will it save you a ton of money? That depends on the routes and if you book ahead. The question is would you spend $270 ($110 in taxes and $160 pass) so see 11 cities with 10 flights if it weren’t for the pass?

If you have a month in Asia… this would be a really cool way of doing things. If you’re trying to save a dime on a few flights, it might not turn out the way you want.

If I have the time, I’ll likely do it. Especially if prices are higher in June and I can fit in Burma and the Philippines.

What about you? Is this too much or this tempting?