Late Arrival at the Departure Gate

I used to be a loyal supporter of Air Asia. But the reason for that support was not because of its service; rather it's simply because of its status as a no-frills budget airline. You see, I'm not one who's after luxury when I travel, nor top-notch service. I always travel economy. However, since last year I've boycotted Air Asia. The reason is because it has become an unreliable airline. It's bound to change flight schedules at a moment's notice; and there's bound to be delays at the airport. Whenever I travel, I'd like to have a certain degree of certainty on the timings of flights, i.e. the times of departures and arrivals. To me, time is very important.

However, over the years of travelling on Air Asia, I've missed flights on several occasions for numerous reasons. At least twice, I think, were because I wrongly read the ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) as ETD (Estimated Time of Departure) somehow, thus arriving at the airport when the plane had landed at the destination. How I made that sort of mistake, let alone making it twice, I have no explanation! But apart from silly mistakes like those, I'm always on time whenever I fly. As I said, time is very important to me.

Even my wife, a notoriously bad time manager, is always on time when it comes to flying. She is almost always late for everything else in life. Over 30 years of sharing my life with her, I've gone through many, many occasions of frustrations, annoyances, even anger when I'm put into a situation where I'm late because I was held back by her tardiness. I've come to get used to it and perhaps have even accepted it by now. After all - seriously now - how many lawyers that you know of are ever on time for appointments? I'd say maybe one in a million? The only time that I was very happy when my wife told me that she's "late" was when we were trying so hard to have a baby after 10 years of marriage.

I get annoyed when there is any delay in plane departures, but I can usually tolerate them because I give the airline the benefit of the doubt by reasoning to myself that it's all because of the safety of the passengers. That is of course not always the reason for delays. On many occasions, it's because some passengers are late and the captain is lenient on them. Filipino passengers, for example, have a curious habit of making sure that they're late to board the plane. Even if they can arrive early, they won't. They will see to it that they're the last persons to board the plane!

But anyway, I always make it a point to be punctual for my flights because I don't want to be the reason for flight delays, even if it's going to eat up just a few minutes of other passengers' time. That is why I have no pity for this traveller and his family for missing his flight because he arrived at the departure gate a few minutes late. 

His demand for a refund was rejected, and I fully support Air Asia for that decision. Before the Covid pandemic struck, I actually bought flights on Air Asia. But because of the ensuing total lockdown during the height of the pandemic, the flights were cancelled, and I was unable to get a refund from the online app. I've never forgiven Air Asia for that up to now! But my demand for a refund was for a totally different reason, and I'm still of the view that I deserve that refund! 

But anyway, the lesson to be learnt here is "DON'T BE LATE"! You have plenty of time to plan the journey to the airport. There should be no excuse whatsoever. And if some unforeseen circumstances arise, causing late arrival at the airport, that is not the airline's fault. Too bad, get over it!