JUST like a dish you’d create in a Thai cooking class, travelling on the new Brisbane to Bangkok Air Asia route is a blend of the five ingredients essential to this nation’s cuisine: sweet, spicy, salty, sour and bitter. Last week I flew this new route, which was launched mid year, to Thailand. I hadn’t travelled with Air Asia for a decade, more by default, than design, the majority of its direct flights previously operating out of the Gold Coast rather than the Queensland capital. As a Brisbane resident, who has seen airlines soar and plummet out of BNE over the years, I really wanted to like this airline. It was like going on a first date, where you’re secretly willing it to work. But, unfortunately, it fell short of the mark.

The Sweet
Check-in at Brisbane International Airport is prompt, polite and professional. On board, the all-Thai staff greet me in Thai, their hands poised in prayer position. Even better, I have an entire row to myself for this nine-hour direct leg. On both legs the Thai crew are super vigilant about safety, on take-off and landing walking through the cabin and checking and triple checking every safety detail such as fastened seat belts.

The Spicy
The cost of this return flight is extremely competitive, coming in at around $500 which is about half that of a full-service carrier. For an additional $400 from Brisbane you can upgrade to a Premium seat which reclines into a flat bed. For those who don’t want to pay the extra $400, but want peace and quiet in economy, there’s also a Quiet Zone towards the front of the plane, which costs an extra $15 and is well worth it.

The Salty
The word “salty” has crept into the Australian vernacular as a term you used when you are annoyed. On this flight this emotion arose from time-to-time. Inexplicably, on the day flight out of Brisbane, crew in the Quiet Zone insist that every passenger close their window shades for the entire flight, so that the cabin is plunged into darkness for nine hours. Even more bizarrely, on the midnight flight home, there is no such insistence, so several hours after take-off, once the sun starts rising in the southern hemisphere, the cabin is flooded with light as you try to sleep. More annoyingly, despite it being deemed a Quiet Zone, the crew did nothing to police the noise of the rowdy boys in the last row of the cabin who decided to share their entertainment device…without headphones. Speaking of entertainment devices, despite this airline being up and running for months now, there are still no devices, nor an entertainment App you can download on this route. I was advised to “bring a good book”.

The Sour
An airline which makes its money from extras such as food and drinks but rapidly runs out of both? Unbelievable. There were only two drink and food runs on this nine-hour flight and while you can pre-book meals, many people don’t. By the second run they were out of white wine plus numerous other meals including their signature hamburger dish they tout on the front of their menu. An ordinary-tasting Australian wine on this route costs $12. There are, strangely, no breakfast items on the menu and so, at 9am Brisbane time (6am local time) I am served a meal of roast chicken in black pepper sauce. Except it looks nothing like that which is presented on the menu. And no, you don’t get real cutlery as the photo suggests either.

The Bitter
I am not an entitled passenger who moves seats without seeking permission from the cabin crew first. On this flight, there were copious rows available in the Quiet Zone for the midnight flight home, so I asked a member of the crew before take-off whether I could move specifically to the back row. She said yes. We took off, the seat belt sign went off, I put on my eye mask, covered myself with my cashmere wrap and proceeded to snatch some much-needed sleep after this work trip. A few minutes later I was being shaken awake by a member of the cabin crew. She told me this was now a “crew rest” area and I needed to move. She accused me of not asking permission to move to this seat. I assured her I had. She left, and was replaced by a second, and then third member of the cabin crew, who all tried to tell me this seat was now reserved for crew rest. Finally, the crew member who originally told me I could have the seat arrived. She admitted she had “made a mistake”. Eventually she acquiesced and told me I could keep the seat. A colleague travelling in the same cabin commented that the crew took out another three entire rows for “rest” but barely used them. When I awoke in the morning I noticed the tray tables were filthy. So filthy I wondered whether this was dirt that was actually a stain which couldn’t be removed. I tested the dirt with my make-up remover wipes. It was easily removed.

The Verdict
Brisbane travellers who are solely price driven may wish to consider this airline but take your own food, entertainment and some antibacterial wipes to clean the seat. For those flyers who want more Bangkok for their buck, this may not be the airline for you.

The Global Goddess travelled as a guest of Air Asia http://www.airasia.com She made several attempts to source basic information from the airline for this review but received no response.