Air Asia Red Carpet Experience to Kota Kinabalu

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Air Asia has been the #1 low cost carrier for the past five years and counting. It has been living up to its tagline of ‘Now Everyone can Fly‘ by providing low prices (sometimes free) to its many destinations all over Asia.

AirAsia has kindly sponsored the return tickets for this bloggers FAM Kota Kinabalu (KK) trip.

For our flight from Singapore to Kinabalu, we were given the VIP Red Carpet Service which gives us priority for everything.

Red Carpet Service , worth 60 (pre-booked)/70 SGD (walk-in) has been introduced to reduce the waiting time for travelers.

Upon reaching the check-in counter (departure from Changi Airport, Terminal 1, Row 13, Counter 1) you would be able to walk down the “Red Carpet” lane feeling like a VIP and receive priority check-in services. There shouldn’t be a (long) queue as they only sell a maximum of 10 such services per flight. With this priority check-in, you will be able to arrive at the airport later as you would not have to queue to deposit your baggage and collect your air tickets.

You will also have priority boarding and be the first in line to board the plane. It might seem a little insignificant as everyone boards the plane eventually BUT if you’re having a lot of pieces of hand carry, you will need this service if you want your hand carry to be near your seat. If you board the plane late and the overhead compartment in your seating area is full, you might have to leave your luggage at a more inconvenient place and you would leave the plane a lot later. This had happened to me a couple of times and I have learnt my lesson by not boarding the plane at the eleventh hour.

Another perks of this service is that your luggage will have a special priority sticker (yellow sticker as seen below). Upon reaching your destination, your luggage would be the first to appear on the conveyor belt. For the case of our trip, arriving in Kota Kinabalu, our luggage was carried out by an Air Asia staff, even before the conveyor belt start moving. It was definitely a VIP experience for us as we left the arrival hall while everyone was still waiting for their luggage as seen in the picture on the right.

Our flight landed at approximately 19:50 and within 30 mins, we have cleared customs, collected our baggage via priority services, bought data sim at the airport, travel to our hotel, Pacific Sutera Harbour (which was less than 10 mins away) and checked-into our hotel rooms and post a photo onto instagram at 20:23. Pretty amazing isn’t it?

We were also given extra leg room seats (row 1, 12, 14) which was worth 17 SGD. The extra legroom seats definitely made my day as I was able to stretch my legs throughout the flight.

After the flight takes off and reaches the cruising altitude, pre-booked Hot Meals were served to us. If you pre-book your meals prior to the flight, it will come with a complimentary 100ml water (which is very heavenly when your throat feels dry in the air).

Bukhara Chicken Briyani (RM 12) – I don’t usually have high expectations of airplane food but this tasted really good!

Pancake with Butter and Maple Syrup (RM 9) – The pancakes were pretty appetizing and it reminded me of the macdonalds hotcakes somehow. The only thing that is lacking was the blueberry jam!

Sunset as seen from the plane window.

Kota Kinabalu Terminal 2 is a budget terminal catering specially for Air Asia flights. You will have to walk the stairs (as seen below) in and out of your plane, rain or shine. Fret not, I do notice that there’s actually a stash of red umbrellas on standby for wet weather. This is a small price to pay for the low prices that Air Asia offers.

*To those who are interested, data sim cards (all sizes are available including nano) are available at Kota Kinabalu Terminal 2.
I bought mine for 20.80RM which includes 5 day usage of 700MB at 3G speed. After 700MB, the speed would be slower.*