If you haven’t submitted your favourite Food or Fashion travel photos to Airasia’s Travel 360° onboard magazine, hurry up! Today is the last day for submission to the first of 3 rounds of photo contest which runs from January until March to be in the running to win free Airasia flights and accommodations to Hong Kong!

I’ve submitted a couple to try my luck. Why don’t you submit yours if you think it’s much better than the one above? For more information, check out the official Travel 360° contest page. Who knows? You could be the one who win! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photography guide

AirAsia X low cost carrier is withdrawing its once popular flights to London and Paris starting from this April 2012! As part of its network re-aligning exercise to focus more on the profitable markets, Airasia X announced last week that a total of 4 flight routes including both the European cities, Delhi and Mumbai of India will soon be ceased from flying! Oh my god! I can’t believe the super duper cheap flights that have helped me to realise both of my Europe trips last 2 years will soon be dropped from Airasia X’s flight route map! I was still browsing through my photo albums of London and Paris to search for the best photos for Airasia Photo Contest last night!

According to the announcement, Airasia X decided to cease both the European flights mainly because of the high fuel cost, new going-to-be-imposed Emissions Trading Scheme and the escalating Air Passenger Duty taxes in UK, not due to its demand, knowing and witnessing myself that the recording load factors of over 80% from both flight routes in 2010.

This is in fact a real bad news of this new year 2012, remembering how Airasia X low cost carrier had inspired me to visit Europe twice in 2 years due to its cheap long haul flight option, and I’m actually planning to fly to Europe again end of this year (which was how I got to know this news). Could this be one of its move to eliminate those competing flight routes with MAS, after their merging exercise in the second half of last year? I don’t know, but it is a real sad news to me…

Budget travelers are filled with despair at the announcement and will need to work harder to fulfill their Europe travel dreams. I have to work even harder to complete my e-guide “From Travel To Photo” which help avid travelers to plan for their budget trip to Europe.

All passengers on the affected flights from the UK, France, and India will be given the option to cancel their reservation and opt for Refund/Credit Shell, re-route to any other AirAsia X destinations or transfer to an alternative airline subject to availability, without any additional cost to the passenger.

Here is the abstract of the Airasia X announcement:

AirAsia X, the long haul, low fare affiliate of AirAsia, today announced a realignment of its network with a focus on its core markets.
The move will see AirAsia X withdrawing services to India (Mumbai and Delhi) and Europe (Paris, London) from its Kuala Lumpur hub as follows:

• Mumbai- Four weekly services will be suspended with the last flight on 31 January, 2012
• New Delhi- Daily services will be suspended with the last flight on 22 March, 2012. Flights in March will be reduced to four weekly services.
• London- Six weekly services will be suspended with the last flight on 31 March, 2012
• Paris- Four weekly services will be suspended with the last flight on 30 March, 2012

Note: Further details on AirAsia X’s withdrawal of Europe and India destinations:

• Europe (London and Paris) -AirAsia X started flights to London in March 2009. At that time, oil prices were less than US$40/barrel, and have since tripled. With the Arab Spring unrest of 2011 spilling over to the unrests in Syria and Iranian oil embargo this year, oil prices are expected to remain high and crippling the economics of long-haul flights, where fuel represents over 50% of operating cost. Moreover, the European situation is also compounded by a very weak economy and depressed consumer demand, which has resulted in a reduction in the number of passengers from Europe on the flights over the past several months. Flights to Europe have also been burdened by exorbitant government taxes such as the UK Air Passenger Duty which will be increased to £92 per departing economy passenger and £184 per departing Premium passenger from 1 April 2012. From 1 January 2012, the European Governments have also imposed an additional carbon tax under their Emissions Trading Scheme, which further adds to an already high cost. The confluence of macro-factors, including high fuel prices, depressed European economy and exorbitant taxes have made it economically impossible to sustain these flights, despite AirAsia X recording load factors of over 80% for its London and Paris flights in 2011. Attempts to increase fares to reflect the higher operating cost recently have shown the price elasticity of travel, with demand falling down adversely.
• India (Mumbai and New Delhi) – AirAsia X launched flights to Mumbai and Delhi in 2010. Structural issues in the Indian aviation market have made it difficult to operate economically viable flights. The airport and handling costs in New Delhi and Mumbai are already more expensive than even airports in Australia, and the authorities have just approved a massive 280% increase in airport fees effective April 2012. The Indian routes have also been under-pressure when the Malaysian Government removed Visa-on-Arrival facilities in August 2010, soon after the routes were launched. This places Malaysia at a significant disadvantage versus Thailand and Singapore who offer Indian tourists convenient Visa-on-Arrival facilities.

Now I really need to search around for more affordable long haul flights to Europe, probably via Skyscanner, if I were to visit Europe again this year. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel guide to Europe

For those of you shutterbugs who haven’t submitted your best travel photos to Airasia, Airasia is hosting a photo contest for its Travel 3Sixty onboard magazine from 3rd January to 14th February 2012. If you haven’t sold enough travel photos for your next travel, this is another chance for you to at least win a free trip to Hong Kong! The contest is open for everyone from any countries!

The photo contest will run for 3 months from January to March 2012, with one different theme for each month. 3 winners each month will win a totally free 4-Day-s3-Nights Return flight + Accommodation package to Hong Kong. For January category, travelers needs to submit photos of those awesome foods or fashion they found and captured on their travel in one of the Airasia flight destinations for the last 2 years.

The contest already started since 3rd January 2012 last week. If you haven’t submitted your best photos and wish to grab this opportunity for free travel, hurry up! The dateline for photo submission for January session is on 31st January 2012. After which, a handful of shortlisted entries will be posted for public voting to choose the winners! Even better if you captured the photos on your trip with either Airasia or Airasia X, you will get additional 20 votes!

Before submitting travel photos to win the ultimate Travel Photographer Of The Year contest later this year, why not joining this simple yet rewarding contest as a warm up? As what I said before, don’t waste your talent and creativity in travel photography! Share with th world out there, you might be one of the lucky winner to win prizes for your next photo trip! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog

I just received my BIG loyalty cum Visa prepaid card from Tune group of Airasia today! I registered myself online as one of the BIG Shot (member) only 6 days ago which means they are quite efficient. Check out my previous post on the BIG card from Airasia for more information. I can now start to earn points for my free Airasia tickets. Hooray! This is how it looks…

Nothing to shout about, just a credit card sized plastic card with normal red and white colour scheme and a huge BIG wording in front. Having a smart chip and Visa logo means I can use it as a Visa prepaid card to shop. The good news is whatever you spend using this card, you will earn 1 BIGGIE (point) for each RM1 spent! For each RM500 (USD160) spent, you will be able to redeem a flight ticket to Siam Reap! I was too late to miss 1400 BIGGIES from my flight to Europe and Japan recently, which could have earned me a round trip to Guangzhou!

Having said that, there is a very steep curve in BIGGIES required for Airasia X flights. Read why I said so here.

Apply your card now and start collecting your BIGGIES. Who knows? You could have earned a free flight with Airasia by the time you realise it. Just make sure you quote your BIG Shots number each time you buy your Airasia tickets online. Happy flying!   – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel guide

I supposed to have something Big to announce today. Coincidentally, I just got a news from Airasia that they have also announced something BIG on yesterday, 14th October 2011, so I give way to them, since they are bigger, and let travelers to fly for FREE! Yes. You heard it right. By how? Let’s read on…

Airasia is introducing a new rewarding scheme called BIG, for travelers to earn points, or BIGGIES each time they spend on Airasia products or shop in one of the Visa accepting outlets, using the new BIG rewarding cum Prepaid Visa card. Once BIGGIES are accumulated up to a certain level, you can use these BIGGIES to actually redeem Airasia flight tickets for free!! The difference with BIG if compared with other reward point scheme is you can earn BIGGIES from whatever money you spend with your BIG prepaid VISA card in any of the 29 Million retailers accepting VISA card WORLDWIDE! What this means is once you top up your BIG prepaid VISA card with sufficient fund, you can charge your shopping in Malaysia as well as overseas to the card and earn BIGGIES! That’s fantastic!

How easy and how many points could one earn and redeem with BIG? I bet this is what most of us care about. No point if only little points could be earn but much more points needed for any redemption, right? Let’s take a look at some of the example given by Airasia.

1) Ways to Earn BIGGIE:

• Purchase and Airasia flights online and earn 1 BIGGIE for each RM4 spent. If you purchase top up items such as baggage, meals, seat etc. with your tickets, you can earn an additional BIGGIE, which means 2 BIGGIES for each RM4 spent. Sh*t! IF they introduced BIG much earlier, I could have earned 1800 BIGGIES already with my flights to Europe this year and last last! ;
• Purchase travel packages from GoHolidays and earn 1 BIGGIE with RM2 spent;
• Stay in one of the Tune Hotels and earn 1 BIGGIE with each RM2 spent;
• Booking one of the Lakehouse hotels in Cameron or Hardrock Hotel in Penang and earn 1,000 BIGGIES per each booking! Oh my!  I could have earned another 1,000 from my visit to Cameron Highland recently!
• Earn BIGGIES from AVIS or Budget car renting worldwide (coming soon. No details on BIGGIES rewards yet)!
• Pay with your BIG Card and earn 2 BIGGIES for every RM 2 spent at over 29 Million VISA merchants worldwide.

2) How many BIGGIES required for free tickets to which destination:

• Redeem BIGGIES for free Airasia flights which starts from as low as 500 BIGGIES only! As what Airasia advertised on their website, 500 BIGGIES can let you fly to Singapore, Siem Reap or Jogyakarta FREE! It means I can fly to Siem Reap 3 times free with my Europe flight tickets!
• For 1,000 BIGGIES (which could be earn from 1 single return flight to London or Paris), you can redeem for a free ticket to Bangkok!
• For 5,000 BIGGIES, you can fly to Guangzhou, Macao, Bali or Ho Chi Minh for Free!
• For 15,000 BIGGIES, or equivalent to 25 average return Airasia Flights to Tianjin or Goldcoast, you get another flight to Goldcoast Free! I don’t understand the rationale behind in setting these BIGGIES requirement. If I convert these points into money, I should be paying 15 times more of the airfare to Bangkok for a flight to Goldcoast! And this is not true in actual! I paid RM200 for Bangkok flight and RM1,000 to Goldcoast, which is only 5 times in monetary terms!
• If you wish to fly to Melbourne, Tokyo, Seoul or New Zealand for free, you need 30,000 BIGGIES to redeem! It is ridiculous and not realistic! Forget about it

I always love to calculate how much a reward point is actually worth. Let’s estimate from the above table. If an average Airasia flight to Bangkok costs RM150, each BIGGIE should worth RM0.15 (simple mathematics by dividing RM150 with 5,000 BIGGIES) . With this same value of RM0.15 and multiply by 5,000, each flight to Bali should cost about RM750, and when multiplying by 15,000, each flight to Goldcoast should cost you RM2,250! No way!

So, unless Airasia is reviewing the BIG flight redemption table when it is really started on 11th Novemeber 2011 (11-11-11),  I doubt this scheme is attractive enough for travelers who wish to redeem Free long haul AirasiaX flights to Europe, Australia or Japan. IMHO, this Airasia’s BIG reward scheme is rather for people who travel more on AirasiaX, like me, and able to gain extra bonus points to redeem for free intermediate short trips to cities nearby such as Bangkok, Bali or Siem Reap! Why not?

Of course, there are other stuffs you can redeem your BIGGIES for, such as travel packages, hotels, merchandise, gift vouchers and more. If you are already a member of Airasia, log on to register for a BIG card within this month (14th October to 13th November 2011) and you will can your first 250 BIGGIES free as a gift from Airasia.

Having said that, you have to make sure you fly enough each year to offset the annual fees of RM5, joining fees of RM10 and other charges applied. Check it out on Airasia’s tune2big.com for more information now! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel guide to Europe