An AirAsia passenger who previously faced the prospect of returning to his home town only on the first day of Raya has managed to get his flight restored to its original date.

MalaysiaNow earlier reported that Mohd Dahlan Mohd Noor had booked round-trip tickets for himself and his family nearly a year ago, on a flight which AirAsia cancelled and rescheduled without his consent just this month. 

Documents sighted by MalaysiaNow showed that the flight, initially scheduled to depart from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Bharu, Kelantan, on April 19, had been changed to April 22 - widely expected to be the first day of the Hari Raya celebration. 

Dahlan was offered the option of choosing a new flight date free of charge but the low-cost airline had provided no other flights between April 19 and 21.

After his case was reported last week, Dahlan was contacted by an AirAsia representative who said they wanted to find a solution to his problem. 

However, he was more upset than ever after being told that AirAsia actually had a flight operating on April 19. 

"Why did they cancel my flight and change it to a new date when there was another flight all along that I could have taken that same day?" he said. 

"When I opened my AirAsia application on March 19 to purchase new tickets, it did show three flights on April 19, 2023 and two on April 20, 2023," he said. 

"The AirAsia representative said there were just enough seats for the three of us on the 6.35am flight on April 19.

"I tried to buy tickets for six people, just to check, and I could continue all the way to the page for payments," he added. 

"How can they say that there were only three vacant seats when I could buy new tickets for six people?" 

When Dahlan made his original purchase on April 23 last year, he paid RM141.96. 

Now, tickets for flights between April 19 and 24 are going for about RM700 per person on the AirAsia platform. 

In the end, Dahlan succeeded in getting seats on an April 19 flight after being contacted by AirAsia again on March 21. 

"I was contacted by an AirAsia representative who finally offered me a flight at 7.55pm on April 19, with the return scheduled for April 24," he said. 

MalaysiaNow has contacted AirAsia and is still awaiting a response. 

https://www.malaysianow.com/news/2023/03/22/airasia-passenger-has-questions-after-getting-new-flight-on-same-day