(This is a blog-vertorial)
I’ve been flying around a lot lately. And if you’re like me, you’ll realise that there’s the so many flight operators in the market right now, and searching for the right airline to bring your from A to B is complicated enough to give you air-sickness even before you board the plane.
It wasn’t used to be that difficult. Last time, if I want to go from, say, Singapore to Bangkok, all I gotta do is ring up my travel agent and they’ll tell me which day, what time and how much.
That was when MAS and the other big players used to rule the skies lah. Nowadays, you got AirAsia lor, JetStar lor, ValueAir lor, TigerAir lor, SuperMan lor, all vying to get a piece of the sky. You call your travel agent also no use because when they hear the names of these low-cost airlines they also act blur like sotong.
Reason why AirAsia flights are always delayed.
Fact is, most low-cost airlines don’t pay much commission to travel agents because they wanna cut corners like taking out the reclining feature from your seats.
If you wanna get the absolute best airfares, you gotta do-it-yourself. That means, searching hundred over websites to find that right flight ,at that suitable schedule, at that price you’re willing to pay.
Enter Fare.net, an online travel search engine.
Fare.net is great. It’s like the Google for airfares. It searches info from traditional airlines, low-cost airlines, online travel agencies, etc and displays the findings all consolidated in one site.
You see their search box on the sidebar of kennysia.com all the time. It’s easy! You enter your flight details, wait a few seconds, and then out poops a list of all available flights along with how much moolah it’s gonna cost you to get there.
Fare.net is the main advertiser on kennysia.com and has been that way since October last year. Writing on kennysia.com is nice though sometimes stressful and costly affair, so it’s great to have them help offset that.
I recently met up with the CTO of Fare.net Gunesh Raj over coffee when I was in KL. This is one young, talented yet humble Kuching boy who’s made it big on the Internet and personally, I just enjoy seeing a fellow Kuching-nite shining bright. On top of advertising on kennysia.com, Gunesh and I talked about the possibility of offering kennysia.com readers something so major, no other blogsites have done it before. I can’t say anything before the deal is finalised, so you guys just have to keep an eye out for that. 😉
Thanks for the coffee, Gunesh!
Starhub Maxonline users in Singapore, I need your help.
Some readers complained that kennysia.com has been loading at turtle speed these past few weeks. After some investigation, I found out that all the speed complaints come from Starhub Maxonline users only. No one else is affected.
I sent an e-mail to Starhub already but blardy hell, they wanted me to tell you guys to comprain directly to them instead. Stupid Starhub, don’t trust me issit?! Scare I bomb your internet ah?
*cough* Anyway, could kind Maxonline users please send an e-mail to helpdesk@starhub.com, requesting them to find out why only you guys are facing these problems on kennysia.com? Lemme know of the outcome yea?
i see it..but i dont believe it..me first? hehe. i like!
are you okay?
Yay more products and stuff. Maybe a discount?!
They’re going to pay you loads of peanuts?
I tried checking a flight to LONDON. To my irritation, they won’t display my results but instead INSIST that they send it to my e-mail. What a sick way and they are probably going to spam me.
finally another post….=D
wah lau… got advertisement liao. commercialized d… -_-!!!
Hmmm,… low cost airlines are so iffy tho….
Maybe I’m just unlucky but the only 2 times I ever used Air Asia, the flight was late by about an hour….
🙁
It’s still ok if you are going on a leisurely holiday and you can spare an hour or two… but if you’re going on a tight scheduled business trip then how?
Free tickets? :D~~~
Gimme more Value Airlines names and I’ll drop dead and die. Somehow, I still feel that traditional Airlines like MAS and SIA are still the most reliable.
its good but smth is lacking…
cos normally if we are travelling, we wld like to find accomodation at one site as well…
it wld be good if they can offer packages including accomodation as well…
OMG… i’m so worry now… i’ve book the free seat for Macau this august… i wonder will the flight delay or not -_-” hopefully not…
FREE AIR TICKETS? Hohohohoho…
Kenny, with regards to the reclining feature.. did u sit anywhere near an exit? coz if u did, that is to prevent obstruction (by taking away the reclining feature) during emergencies.
Ooo free air tickets is it?
Kahsoon, at least small stuffs can make people happy by reading his blogs. Your blogs are not interesting and most of the time get screwed by people. Remember kahsoon.com’s parody version – Tiredsoon? Haha. Go suck on some balls. Prizes won’t get you more readers you pussy.
Kenny, you’re wearing your blind t-shirt again. Actually i tried to find that t-shirt 4 or 5 months back, but i couldn’t find it coz they don’t make it anymore. Darn. It’s kinda cool with the braille embroidery on it. Hmm, what else can a travel company give besides air tickets or complimentary stays, etc…
i hate to say it man but you’re showing the early signs of selling out… Anyway, your blog’s still good shit and i wouldnt care if you sold out anyway
For most of the tickets that I checked, it’s expensive lar.
I can’t see anything special on this, really. 🙂
KNNCCB another crab advertisement!
FREE FLIGHTS! That’s what the world needs! I’m all up for a London-NYC flight if it’s on offer! *Grin, grin*
tried using fare.net but realize that the prices of the tickets are actually more expensive than going to the respective airlines directly?
or maybe its the dates. i don’t know
before anything happens, take note that your fare.net bar seems to be a bit screwed when loading the page, it floats everywhere and goes to it’s original place when the page is done loading 100%, so yeah, before anything else
YeahHH!!!! Go Kuching-nites/Kuchingites!! haha
Tried Fare.net… they want ur email addresses…can’t they just display the results on screen?…That’d be more convenient.. 🙂
You misspelt ‘pops’ as ‘poops’. Oops.
wow, so what’s coming up ? free airflight coupons ? hehehehe i didn’t know there’s so many other airlines besides mas and airasia 😛
I tried fare.net, it seems wonderful, but lacking a few cheap consolidators.
I have been in the airline industry for 10 years & I have not seen anything like this from a malaysian. Very good effort indeed.
It didnt ask me for the email address, works just fine.
Anyway, its good that you introduced this site to us.
Gunesh Raj is not from Kuching; he’s an Ipoh (Perak) guy.
Thanks.
To Anonymous:
LOL. Kenny dun need prizes to get more readers, he already have enough number of readers, and he is not a pussy (His balls are maybe bigger than urs.)
Anyway, Kenny, I sent an email to Starhub le. Hopefully the problem can be solved, cos ur site isnt the only site experimenting the “slow” problem that starhub posed.
they do display the results on the screen. the email part is just in case u wanna read it later after closing the page, without have to do the search again.
You other anonymous readers out there.. Please watch what the heck you comment against kenny okay? You guys ought to show him more respect
Let him “sell out” if he wants to. If you ask me, i think he’s doing us all a favour introducing us to this convenient service. And its his blog, so let it be. if you think he’s overdoing it by doing ads for other companies, too bad. But still, respect his own decision.
You anonymous people out there, come on lar! Grow up! If its your blog, then fine la if you dont wanna put it up. if not, please control your comments. I feel really bad for kenny knowing that he has to deal with people like you sometimes =(
Wish you all the best with proceedings kenny!
Chris..that anonymous comment wasnt even directed to Kenny,it was to Kahsoon, no idea what its doing here, tho…and the other commentor who commented on the ‘selling-out’ issue wasnt anonymous..have you been readin closely? Cos we wouldnt want another blog war to start up, would we?
KENNY!
Please tell me you are negotiating some special deals for flights to PERTH! ;D
Adoi…I wish there could be something like Airasia that can travel in the interiors of Sarawak…Kapit, Sri Aman, Lubok Antu….like those twin otters….no company picking up the initiative to have rural flights? It would be profitable really if they take into account the delivery of goods via plane to these rural areas etc..
AGAIN you use your blog as a marketing tool.. this will be the last time I ever come to your blog again kenny.. you’re such a whore
Deejay If you don’t like kenny using his blog as a marketing tool.. Just get the hell out, no one is interested to know whether you’re visiting his blog or no. YOu’re nothing to all his readers. Begone u pest
Again, a case of mistaken identity. It was Roger Tan who commented on the ‘marketing tool’ thingy, but Syl mistakenly slams Deejay. Aisehman.
uh.. i tried with my firefox, couldn’t get any display results. just a blank result screen and an option to receive the results thru email.
i retried with IE. same thing happened.
don’t tell me i’ve to switch off popup and ad blockers or firewalls to see my results. grr.
Thanks Kenny… The website is already proving to be handy. For some reason though it is not displaying the prices. But at least I can find my options all in one go.
Hey Kenny.. i was watching this funny MTV and i kept finding the lead actress very familiar… until she(he) reminded me of you…
Here is the link:P
http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=_AQvqsZFgDY
Enjoy!
Quite unrelated – I think Air Asia flight “delays” are due to either overbooking or underbooking (hence, they wait for more passengers to turn up, and so cancel flights in order to squeeze more people per plane). Not sure if that is true..
Hi Kennysia.com readers,
Thanks for your comments & Thanks Kenny for the kind introduction. Very much appreciated, and for your incredible effort to create this blog to this magnitude that it is today.
I do understand that some of you may have some problems with the website. Please try this:
1. Change the Security Mode for IE to Medium or Default. Allow Javascript to run. This site runs with Ajax & some older browsers may have some problems. Il create a simpler website for older browsers soon.
2. Theres normally a message from IE stating its going to post a request & it may be dangerous. This happens to all websites when you try it the 1st time. Just Click on to allow.
It should work with standard popup blockers.
Thanks for everything, If theres more problems, please email me personally & I shall do my level best to assist.
One more thing, please tune in to kennysia.com often for our supprise.
With kind regards.
Gunesh Raj
gunesh.raj@gmail.com
I think either the complains worked! I’ve got no problem surfing now. Maybe you’ve a fan in StarHub IT department!
kenny, apparently there isn’t ANY commission from Malaysia’s budget airlines given to the travel agent when making a AirAsia reservation for customer.
Travel agent only charges a certain transaction fee for doing work for the clients.
Virgin Blue, yes, they offer not more than 5% commission to the travel agents who made online bookings for the clients.
It’s nothing to hide even for MH, SQ etc, Malaysia travel agents’ bread & butter is based on 5% commission only, profit margin is extremely low.
Better sell yao zha gwai.
At first i thought it was a fantastic idea. After a while i found that it’s the stupidest monkey idea i ever heard about.
I was looking for a flight, back and forth from singapore to melbourne and i found one offered for 533 sing dollar. I thought i just picked up a bargain as the market price for it is actually around 8-900. So i clicked it and i was met with disappointment:
Itinerary Not Available
The specific itinerary you asked for is not available due to either one or more of the following:
You have chosen travel dates when nothing is available or nothing is scheduled.
Seat on the specific carrier you requested is not available.
Seat on the booking class you selected is not available.
Very stupid right? why show the fare in the search engine at the first place, when nothing is available at the last place?
Hi Gunesh, you’re next in my blog
hey there Kenny, just to add my two-cents on the http://www.fare.net site…I have just booked a flight to Manila a few hours ago via SIA’s webbie, and when i did the same search on http://www.fare.net, it showed the price by SIA to be different. Perhaps it works better with the no-frills carriers, than with the big carriers…
Hi wenjun & kenneth,
Thanks for using fare.net
wenjun:
1. We had a good response from kennysia.com readers that some of our partners websites went down. Yes, the searches were high.
2. We are committed to serve & find you the latest ‘LIVE’ fare from the suppliers that are willing to work with us. But then again this is Asia, not everything is automated & the fares listed does not actually mean Available.
To solve this, we added the Green ‘A’ to say its Available to our knowledge & we arrange it on top & not according to the price.
So, please bare with us as we learn from our experiances & improve our services. We are commited to what we do & would like more comments like this.
kenneth:
I agree that some fares could be cheaper than us. Also, Some sites are really too slow to be shown as a ‘Live’ fare & therefore we cant show them. What we do is to place a link so that you may click to view the results in their site without entering your search criteria.
The price for SIA is by a consolidator & not from SIA. We are working on getting back SIA’s content back in soon.
Theres more to come.
Also, thanks for the personal emails & encouragement.
Gunesh Raj
gunesh.raj@gmail.com
hi kenny. im a starhub cable user. yesterday i wrote to starhub about the slowness. today, they replied telling me that it’s okay. indeed, the page refreshes within seconds.
thought i update ya 🙂
hi kenny. Just a blog post date sequence issue please. Why does your blog open to a post dated Jan 11, when its Jan 22’nd here in NZ. To get to your most recent post on the 20th I have to visit your Jan 06 archive. My cookies are deleted daily. Will try resaving your url in favs. Regards from New Zealand.
aiyoh ….kopi-o only meh ???
suppose to iced mocca mah !
woo hoo !
Were u sitting 1 row in front of the emergency exit? The seats on these rows don’t recline cos if reclined, it will impede evacuation process if there is an evacuation. That is why rows next to the emergency exits have bigger leg room cos ppl don need to squeeze their way out..