As Asia prepares for a discount air war, Winsor Dobbin flies on the cheap and Hilary Doling tells us what the future holds.

FACING a slow and laborious overnight return rail journey from Butterworth to Singapore with a stopover in Kuala Lumpur (the word clunking simply doesn’t do justice to our outbound journey), we opted instead for a 70-minute flight from Penang to Johor Bahru and a short bus ride at the end.

AirAsia , the new Malaysian budget airline, has opened up all sorts of possibilities to travellers who don’t want to spend large chunks of their Asian holidays sitting upright on trains or buses full of locals, their vegetables and their poultry, or are unwilling to splash out for expensive first-class accommodation on trains that go bump in the night.

AirAsia is a superslick operation with an easy-to-navigate website (although you’ll need your passport number handy if you want to make a booking). Seats on flights within Malaysia and to Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia are all e-ticketed and absurdly cheap.

We were amazed to find that flights from Penang to Johor Bahru (in Malaysia, but just across the causeway from Singapore) cost just RM79 ($28) with a further RM19 per person in taxes. Even more remarkably, cheap seats were available on the day we wanted to travel. All up we paid under $70 for our two seats.

Although we somehow circumvented security at the very modern Penang Airport (our bags were never screened), everything else went swimmingly. We checked in without a queue (despite what the airline tells you, it isn’t necessary to arrive two hours before departure) and had time for a meal and some shopping before boarding on time (and arriving 10 minutes early).

You pay for food and drink on board (an iced Milo cost RM3) the modern jets and seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. The service is swift and smilingly professional and there is plenty of leg room.

Upon arrival at Johor Bahru, we boarded a bus for the 45-minute journey into Singapore where we were dropped at a train station to make our own way into the city.

For $35 you can bet we’ll be using AirAsia again particularly as it has applied to fly from several Malaysian destinations directly into Singapore’s Changi Airport. Winsor Dobbin

The new discount airfare war will be over Asia.

Skies above Singapore, Thailand and the rest of South-East Asia are soon going to be buzzing with discount airlines’ planes, like so many metal mosquitoes. The Qantas announcement at the end of last week that it intended to invest in a low-cost carrier in the region means that Singapore will have its fourth low-cost airline by the end of 2004. Qantas plans to operate to a range of Asian cities within five hours of Singapore with a fleet of four single-aisle aircraft either B737-800s or A320s. The plan is to increase the number of aircraft to 20 over the following three years, which shows how serious Qantas is about the market.

Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation managing director Peter Harbison said: “This latest move clearly shows an aviation industry in a massive transition phase. The old competitive rules are gone forever. ”

Singapore’s market will be increasingly crowded as Valuair , AirAsia , Tiger Airways and the new Qantas-led LCA take to the skies over the next nine months, which has to be good news for holiday-makers who can expect fierce competition and ultra-low fares.

Good news, too, for a number of countries within Asia which have been suffering from a drop in overseas visitors after the SARS crisis early last year.

And the indicators are that there are more low-cost carriers to come. Aviation experts from the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation are pointing to China as the country for the growth of low-cost airline services and the rapid rate of development so far suggests it will happen as early as 2017 or 2018.

The likely entry of low cost international services to destinations in southern China will apply pressure for change throughout the region.

So over the coming year, the airports in China, including Hong Kong and Macau, Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, Taiwan and southern Japan may find themselves all vying for the new wave of low-cost carriers. Which means a whole range of new travel options and cheaper destinations for us.

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