To Call AirAsia's New iOS App Disappointing Is An Understatement

Back in July Air Asia announced that its mobile apps on all platforms as well as the mobile website had been pulled until further notice. It also suspended pretty much all of its mobile services. The popular low cost airline at that time did not provide a reason as to the cancelation of its mobile services but it did say that it was working on a replacement service. As it happened, that day begins today as Air Asia has just launched its brand new iOS app on the App Store with an announcement on its Facebook page.

The app seems quite well designed at first glance and provides a fresh new look that presents straightforward options and destinations. The main screen displays four primary options to search for flights, check in, see the on board culinary menu and a link to travel guides all underneath a set of beautiful images of various travel destinations.

Digging into flight search shows you a list of cities and countries that Air Asia serves but just as a heads up, it lists cities based on countries rather than outright alphabetical order. This means that if you intend to use the tiny strip of alphabets on the far right hand side of the screen to navigate through the list, be prepared for a bit of surprise. Short version: If you're looking for Phnom Penh, you don't go to P, you go to C for Cambodia.

The app lets you check in to your upcoming flight by entering your booking information and details to send the corresponding barcode but apparently it won't let you check your existing booking. The app does not provide a login service that you could use to check your account at AirAsia and your booking history which makes it far less useful than it could have been.

This lack of access also means that you'll have to look up your booking details in your email to be able to check in. Additionally, there's no word whether the app supports Passbook on the new iOS 6 and according to those who have used the app more than I have, it doesn't.

There is also a list of food that the airline serves on board but aside from looking like a restaurant menu, well shot photos and nicely described they may be, it is nothing but a list of food. It doesn't even let you make selections for your next flight unfortunately.

The travel guide section takes you to a page about Malaysia, the airline's home country. With very detailed information on the country and the suggested cities and other travel destinations, it's difficult to fault this section of the app. That is until you realize that it doesn't let you look up places outside of Malaysia.

Perhaps Air Asia chose Malaysia as the inaugural profile for its travel guide, but there's no way of knowing whether this will change in the future. Surely it should but the lack of navigation menu or an option to choose other countries makes this a lot less encouraging. Perhaps AirAsia could have brokered a deal with one of the more popular travel guides like Lonely Planet to provide an actual guide for travelers. Perhaps it did but talks failed, who knows.

As it stands, the brand spanking new AirAsia app for iOS looks pretty but doesn't do much. To add insult to injury, the app seems to enjoy crashing and giving you a blank white screen as well as serving notices of session time outs every now and then for some strange reason.

Naturally you'd go to the airline's actual website from your mobile browser to see if the company's done something more that they might have neglected to include in the app with the hope that it doesn't throw you out with session time outs like the app seems to enjoy doing. So you enter AirAsia's address into your browser and then it hits you.

The app that you've been using, is the mobile website. The app turns out to be nothing more than the mobile site pretending to be an app by way of a wrapper. And that's when you yell out and curse profanities at AirAsia.