Southeast Asia domestic flights

Southeast Asia domestic flights

What follows is a brief, country by country, rundown on the main Southeast Asia domestic flights and regional routes that you’re likely to be using on one of our small group tours.

Dealing with the current curtailing of schedules and increases in fares on international routes into Southeast Asian hubs such as Bangkok, Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur etc is one matter, but what about once you’ve arrived? Many of our tours are multi-destination while certain countries are relatively large, and without being rude, awkwardly shaped. Long, narrow Thailand and Vietnam both extend for some 1600 kilometres or so from north to south, Malaysia is split into Peninsula and Borneo sections by the South China Sea while Indonesia is continent-sized in its own right.

Taking into account terrain and road conditions even travel in some of the region’s smaller nations such as Laos may require domestic flights to cut down on long and tiresome drives.

Firstly on our tours, wherever possible, we try to avoid flights in favour of trains, boats or buses. This has obvious ecological benefits, while also keeping costs down and limiting time spent waiting around in airports. You’re in Cambodia, Thailand etcetera to discover the country, not discover airport terminals, while simply flying from one designated highlight to another provides a very distorted view of the destination in question. For instance you’ll see other tours including flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. It is a 5 hour drive – plus stops – instead of a 45 minute flight, but you’ll get to see typical scenery and villages as well as visiting points of interest along the way. Ditto for the 6 hour public boat ride up the Mekong from Vietnam to Phnom Penh. While again, flight time is less than 1 hour from Saigon to the Cambodian capital, don’t forget to include; a transfer to the airport, check-in time, plus collecting baggage and passing immigration at the other end. A 45 minute flight quickly becomes 4 to 5 hours (and that’s without any delays) and a $25 boat ticket turns into a $100 flight.

However, having to include certain unavoidable Southeast Asian domestic flights does occasionally place us and our tours at the mercy of local carriers and their sometimes weird and wonderful scheduling.

Any flight can suffer delays, cancellations or rerouting due to weather conditions, technical issues, psychopaths chucking missiles around and so-on but tight landing and take off slots means larger airport will do their best to keep this to a minimum. However in the case of some remote Lao or Borneo airport this is not an issue and the airline can basically do as it wishes. While a tropical storm or sick captain is still a valid excuse, determining factors are, in our experience, more often down to financial concerns. That’s to say, not enough bums on seats to make the flight commercially viable so departures will then be cancelled at very short notice and combined with another flight, ensuring at least one out of 2 aircraft is profitable.

In the case of smaller airports we’re not just talking about a couple of hours but at 24 hours notice a flight can be changed from morning to evening or even one day to the next making our tour schedules and transport and accommodation bookings, to say the least, sometimes messy. (As a reassurance however, we’d better point out that the inconvenience and extra work is largely behind the scenes and our staff have always managed to find solutions to whatever has been thrown at them. The vast majority of guests can immediately tell the difference between organisational errors on our part and events beyond our control.)

Some Southeast Asian domestic flights, routes and airlines are worse than others so we will name and shame, as well as giving credit to the more reliable ones. Overall, while there is a plethora of local operators, including some fly by night companies (no pun intended), we obviously only use those which conform fully with international safety and service standards.

Borneo and Malaysia

The compact size of Peninsula Malaysia means internal flights aren’t usually necessary and are restricted to island extensions to Langkawi and Kota Bahru (for the Perhentians) although our West Malaysia and Borneo tour does include a flight from Penang to Kota Kinabalu. This isn’t one of the country’s busier routes so at present there is just one direct, daily flight, meaning we’re at the mercy of Air Asia. While we’d count them as one of the most reliable of Southeast Asian domestic carriers, during quiet periods we have had to change to Malaysia Airline’s Penang to KL to Kuching route instead. (Far pricier – which is our problem not yours – but does involve a change in KL.)

Borneo’s a different matter and lengthy driving times do mean a number of local flights are inevitable. Air Asia also run the Sandakan to Kota Kinabalu flights which so far, have always been problem free. Not so for MASwings’ (a subsidiary of the national carrier MAS and which seems synonymous with AirBorneo) Lahad Datu route which features on our Danum and Tabin extensions. On one occasion last year they cancelled the last flight of the day at the last minute leaving our guests among a group of 20 or so tourists stuck at the airport, many of whom had onward connections from Kota Kinabalu. (Danum helpfully organised a coach – which was paid for by the airline – but meant an all night drive across Borneo.) The same carrier flies the Kuching to Mulu to Kota Kinabalu route but again, we’re happy to say that one has always been problem free.

Cambodia

A small country with greatly improved roads means that Cambodia doesn’t need to feature in our Southeast Asia domestic flights rundown. However, a Lao Airways Vientiane to Phnom Penh flight does appear on our Indochina Adventure and which, despite what we’re going to say later about that particular airline, has been completely reliable for the 20 plus years we’ve been booking it. Otherwise, Phnom Penh’s shortage of long haul routes means any tour finishing in either Siem Reap or Phnom Penh will generally require an extra flight to Bangkok. There are a number of daily flights including Thai, Bangkok Airways and Air Asia so no issues with this one. (Thai are expensive with the budget option Air Asia being, in our opinion, being just as good.) Bangkok Airways comes with free lounges and an ‘Asia’s Boutique Airline’ slogan although we have suggested to staff on several occasions they rename it ‘Asia’s Delayed Airline’. Since Air Asia fly to Bangkok’s Don Muang and the others to Suvarnabhumi Airport, the deciding factor here is possibly onward connections.

Indonesia

With so many different islands covering such a wide swathe of the planet it’s hardly surprising that Indonesia is one of the trickiest destination in our Southeast Asia domestic flights rundown. Logistical problems occur when you’re trying to get from A to B, (e.g. Medan to Yogyakarta on our Sumatra to Bali tour) without going via Jakarta. In fact this post was prompted by a recent issue on this particular route where, having booked guests on the solitary direct flight from Medan to Jogja, (a 17.30 departure on Lion Air), we were told at 1 day’s notice the flight had been cancelled and passengers moved to an 08.30 departure with a 3 hour stop-over in Jakarta. Since this had happened before, we’d preempted the problem by including a night in Medan beforehand so in this case merely resulted in a missed morning tour of Medan and an inconvenient stop-over. (The previous time this occurred we’d been staying on Samosir Island in the middle of Lake Toba necessitating a rush to catch the last boat to the mainland and an overnight drive to catch the 07.00 check-in at Medan.)

Second only to Air Asia in size, Lion Air have upped their game in recent years and have a largely new fleet of planes and fully conform to international operating standards although they do come under consistent criticism for scheduling and punctuality. The airline does however have a very extensive network of destinations and at the end of the day there’s often no choice. Tourist popular international routes in and out of Denpasar or the capital Jakarta are certainly more reliable than local flights to sometimes more obscure destinations, (not that the country’s 3rd largest city Medan is ‘obscure’ but…)

Laos

In its former incarnation Lao Aviation, the operator was notorious for dodgy old Soviet planes and helicopters, poorly trained crew and use of several well below par airports. We recall UN staff back in the 90s stating they had to check which pilot was flying that day as there were said to be only 2, former CIA trained, pilots fit to do the job. Happily, they too have upped their game, with a name change to Lao Airways, a new Airbus fleet and upgrade of regional airports.

That said most of our Lao journeys are still done by road or rail, including transfers to Luang Prabang and Pakse on our southern Lao tour. (A route which many other tours do by air thus regrettably skipping Hin Boun and Konglor as well as the old colonial town of Savannakhet.) The only internal flight we can’t avoid is Phonsavan to Vientiane, otherwise it’s a 12 hour drive!

As we mentioned earlier, Lao’s international routes are generally efficiently run but the domestic, Phonsavan flight (for the Plain of Jars), is a clear winner in the problematic Southeast Asia domestic flights charts with constant schedule changes and cancellations often at very short notice.. Our Lao tour groups may then discover at the last minute that they have an extra night or 1 less night in Phonsavan and that they are leaving in the morning instead of afternoon or vice versa.

Thailand

Happily, the flight situation is better in Lao’s larger and wealthier neighbour Thailand. The national carrier Thai Airways has cut back on a lot of less popular routes to regional airports but the gap has been filled by Nok Air, Thai Air Asia, the aforementioned Bangkok Airways plus the Vietnamese budget carrier Vietjet. All have decent fleets and safety records and Lao, Indonesian and even Malaysian style last minute changes and cancellations are rare.  However, with very crowded hubs such as Chiang Mai, Bangkok (both airports), Phuket etc, delays are frequent and will cause knock-ons to smaller regional destinations.

We avoid Thai as they consistently charge nearly double most of the other companies mentioned, for what is a near identical service plus the addition of a free pastry. Bangkok Airways are also expensive and, as we pointed out above, in our experience suffer frequent delays. (The compensation of free tuna sandwiches and orange juice concentrate in their lounges can wear off quickly.) Several airports, such as Samui, Trat (for Koh Chang and Koh Mak), and Sukhothai are privately owned by Bangkok Airways so in those cases there’s no choice. (The old Siem Reap Airport was also owned by the same airline although the new Angkor International is not.)

Air Asia have the advantage of flying in to Bangkok’s less hectic Don Muang Airport (although careful if you have an onward connection), while relative newcomer Vietjet seem to be making big efforts to protect their market share and we’ve never had reason to complaint about their reliability.

Sri Lanka

A small island with all journeys on our Sri Lanka tours made by road or rail so serendipitously not relevant to this Southeast Asia domestic flights post.

Vietnam

Although long and thin in shape, an efficient rail system means we can happily keep flights on our Vietnam tours to an absolute minimum. That boils down to a solitary flight, Danang to Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) courtesy of either the excellent Vietnam Airlines or aforementioned Vietjet. (Note, otherwise this is a 20 hour train or bus ride and we already have one sleeper train ride from Hanoi to Dong Hoi on our Vietnam tours so…) As the country’s 3rd busiest airport, Danang definitely counts as an international hub rather than smaller regional port so aside from occasional delays, there are no major issues with the generally efficient national carrier.

Yunnan – China

We are about to add (or reinstate) a Yunnan tour on our menu but this is another itinerary where we’ve managed to keep domestic flights to a minimum and all travel, with the exception of a short hop from the wonderfully named Shangri La International Airport to Kunming, is by road or rail. This departure involves new entries into our regional airlines list with China Eastern and China Southern Airlines but more on this once we’ve completed our upcoming Yunnan recce.