NAIA (Ninoy Aquino International Airport) Terminal 4
The first time I went to Manila years ago, AirAsia had yet to fly into Manila. The only way to go via AirAsia was to fly into Clark airport, which was 2 hours north of Manila. From Clark, you had to take a 2 hour bus ride to Manila city. This time around, I took AirAsia Zest straight to NAIA airport in Manila. AirAsia Zest lands at Terminal 4, which is a domestic terminal that is incredibly small. Only AirAsia Zest is using this terminal for international flights if I'm not mistaken, and this really downgrades the travelling experience for international travelers arriving into Manila for the first time. There is not a single souvenir shop in the terminal. So don't even think about duty free shopping. There is only one small stall calling itself the AirAsia Cafe.
When my plane landed, we taxied for a really long time on the runway before parking at Terminal 4. From here, we had to queue up for a bus that would drive us to the terminal which was less than 50m away. They did not let us walk to the terminal because there was a lotof vehicular traffic, so it was too dangerous. The fact that we had to take the bus(es) meant that the deplaning process was really slow.
When I brought up this issue with my Filipino friends, they told me this was the major issue with NAIA airport. That they just kept adding terminals, but the number of runways did not change. Hence, the runways would always be the bottleneck. The Philippines economy is definitely growing, but one of the obstacles is the bad state of the transport infrastructure that is its main international airport. Just the amount of time it takes to get through the aiport results in high conversion costs for any business, and leaves visitors with a less than impressed after-thought in their minds.
Taxi Scam
It is also one of the furthest terminals from the city, and there seems to be a scam that the taxi drivers are running. The other passengers had told me that in going to the airport from the city,their taxi drivers had taken them to Terminal 1 at the start. When told to go to Terminal 4, they demanded extra payment as Terminal 4 was much further. There is no shuttle service (bus/train) from terminal to terminal. And walking from 1 terminal to the other is not convenient either, as you have to walk back to the main road before you can go to another terminal, so it is as good as going to another airport.
So my word of advice is make sure you know which terminal your airline is at, and tell your taxi driver from the start which terminal you are going. If not, seems like they will take you to Terminal 1, and demand extra when you want to go to any of the other terminals later on.
Note: Not sure if this is an intentional scam by the taxi drivers, as this is only assumed by the other passengers. My thinking is that the taxi drivers should know that this mix-up happens all too often, and that they choose to remain silent to be able to exploit the situation.
Note: Not sure if this is an intentional scam by the taxi drivers, as this is only assumed by the other passengers. My thinking is that the taxi drivers should know that this mix-up happens all too often, and that they choose to remain silent to be able to exploit the situation.
AirAsia Zest
As for AirAsia Zest, I have to say, this is the worst AirAsia product on offer. On my flight to Manila, the plane was really old, and I am assuming that it was one of the planes inherited from Zest Air when AirAsia bought it over. For starters, the legroom was extremely tiny, even for AirAsia standards. Later on, I had realised that the plane did not even offer the HotSeat option, and that was when I realised this plane was probably not delivered new from Airbus, but a hand-me down from Zest Air.
For my return flight, I had arrived at the check-in counter to find that my flight was to be delayed for 3 hours. The only compensation would be a free friend chicken meal from Jolibee. The reason for the delay was cited as due to turn around time.
Having gone through this, I can now understand why the Phillipines arm of Airasia is not doing well. I do not think many of the other passengers are willing to fly AirAsia Zest on the KL- Manila route trough Terminal 4 again.
Image source: habagatcentral.com (see related link)
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