Sounds good in principle but there are a lot of buts. IT fly's from only Melbourne at present and to quote the SMH

...the AirAsia X experience is anything but simple and convenient. If you want to fly from Australia to London, you have to book twice - once to get to Kuala Lumpur and the separate flight from KL to Stansted (north of the capital but, like Heathrow, with a train service into the city).

I hate hassle when travelling and getting to Melbourne and then into London from Stansted would add quite a bit of time to the journey time.

I prefer Singapore too.

Here's a question for you all....have you ever been on a domestic flight in Australia that hasn't been at least 30 minutes late on takeoff? I haven't.
I fly regularly on business, Quantas, VB, Jetstar...all seem bloody tardy to me.

No...it flies from Gold Coast, Perth & Melbourne.....has been flying out of GC since late 2007.

Never have understood the issue with 'low cost' airways. The seats are the same (same 32" pitch as the majority of airlines) and the aircraft are generally newer than the equivalent Quantas/BA/Malaysia Airlines fleet.

I have never heard anyone declare how good the food on their flight was either. No matter which Michelin starred chef the airline claim to have brought in to 'revamp' their menu, you end up with a tin tray of rubber food, neon yellow in complexion which, if it had emerged from your microwave at home, you wouldn't have fed to the dog. So take your own - surely you can go without a lukewarm meal for a couple of hours? Eat before-hand and then eat at your destination or lay-over.

As for booze - if you drink on a longhaul flight then you get everything you deserve. Being pissed on a flight and then dehydrated, hung-over and jet-lagged all at the same time is not my idea of high times. But if you do want to drink on the flight take some with you - ditto snacks.

And as for the so-called entertainment - they're *all* shite. I've flown first class, business, super-economy and economy and no-matter where you sit, those screens are shit. You get some edited-for-three year olds version of a movie, a yoga channel demonstrating ways to stretch without poking Hanz the German sitting behind you in the eye, re-runs of Yes Minister and a map of the world that only goes to indicate just how long your miserable flight's going to take.

The vast majority of us are not well-off and have to content ourselves with economy seating. And the fact of the matter is that no matter whose flag's on the side of the plane, your flight here will be long and dull, probably punctuated by the sounds of screaming children and the dull shrieks of pain as someone's foot gets run over by the duty-free trolley. So get an inflatable neck pillow, a portable DVD player, a large bottle of water and a good book and dig in.

I try to sleep so service is not a huge deal for me, although now we've doubled our journey time I do watch one or two movies. I have one drink at most, as I dehydrate terribly.

My tip for food is to book a special diet meal. They don't do one that copes with all my intolerances so I just have fun trying different ones, figure Asian usually suits me best (usually both lactose- and gluten- free) and I really enjoyed the curry for breakfast last year. Might book that again.

Oh and you get served first so you can finish your meal, go to the loo, and be sat back down cosied up before everyone else has had their trays taken away.

It's decided - we're going SIA. A380 all 3 flights. Now just need to negotiate with The Geek, are we having 3 or 4 days in Singapore on the way back, and we're booking the flights.

The pitch is fine, width is the problem....AAX new aircraft are in a 3-3-3 config where other airlines have 2-4-2......some of the seats are incredibly narrow....I've seen them.

Not allowed on AAX - due to the various religious / cultural beliefs of the pax apparently. No ham sandwiches then! Or even bottles of water.

As for entertainment...I think some of the carriers are up to 23 inch screens in first now......AAX actually has pretty good screens in the new aircraft though. Can't tell you what was playing....I didn't watch.

I agree with you, I fly singapore business all the time, brilient service, flat beds, great food, would never give Qantas/NA a thought unless it was an internal flight.

Not really true on many airlines these days - Air NZ, Emirates, Singapore Airlines all have excellent systems with hundreds of movies and TV Shows. Cathay Pacific, Qantas and BA also have entertainment on demand now but not quite the same choice. Nothing much you can do about the screen size but on my recent travels I've actually run out of time to watch everything I've wanted to watch.

totally agree although Qantas and BA are very iffy as far as service is involved, depends on the flight crew and its a long trip with menapausal/hormonal/hungover miserable staff

I bloody hate flying and no amount of 'comforts' on the flight, short of twenty hours of general anaesthetic, can make up for the fact that spending 24 to 36hrs stuck in a flying metal tube, punctuated by a stop in a fancy service station, is a truly awful experience.

I tried to find these magic $1000 return flights from Melbourne to London on their website. The Mel-KL sector is cheap but the KL-London flights are all about $1200 ... total cost of flights - [before tax] is about $1400 - after tax not likely to be much cheaper than the Malaysia and Cathay deals for about $2100 including taxes available on Webjet.

I couldn't agree more.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just climb into a stasis chamber for the duration of the flight!

I totally agree Michael, as you say KL is acceptable, but to the Uk on a budget airline no thanks. Tiger, Jetstar etc are ok for short hops with little luggage and a full tummy

I just read the terms and conditions on the AirAsiaX website and you are prohibited from bringing meat onboard, although non-perishable foodstuffs are fine. You are, however, fully permitted to bring water on board as long as each bottle is clear and with a maximum volume of 1 litre.

So how is my point not true? 100s of TV shows that you've already seen and 100s of poorly edited swearing-removed movies you've already seen. I'd far rather bring my own entertainment, knowing that I hadn't watched it 20 times, than take pot luck on finding a new episode of House on the seat-back.

I guess living in your part of the world, you must have lost touch with how much progress the 'other' part of the world have achieved in the last few decades!!! FYI, Air Asia is the biggest no frills airline in South East Asia and dare I say, Asia Pacific. You will need to get your facts rights before making comments. Please bear in mind that British Airways isn't the best airline in the world. As a matter of fact, there are other airlines in Asia that surpassed BA in terms of service, comfort,.... etc.