AirAsia and Scoot gear up to connect Asia and Europe, low-cost style

AirAsia has just announced that they will start a new route on October 30th, flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Istanbul, and on to Barcelona.
AirAsia, a suspiciously cheap ($2 flight sales, $20 regular flights within Southeast Asia) yet apparently quite safe and well-rated airline, used to connect Asia to London and Paris, but stopped a few years ago because fuel was expensive and they couldn't make enough money. This exciting news could mean cheap flights between Southeast Asia and Europe!

Tickets aren't available yet, but let's keep our fingers crossed and hope it's cheap! Just to note, I flew on AirAsia from Singapore to Bangkok yesterday and it was just fine. On-time arrival, snoozy-comfortable-enough seats that I passed out in, and even an empty seat between me and the guy next to me.

Scoot, a Singaporean low-cost airline, also just announced that they'll be extending to Europe, this time connecting Singapore directly to Athens, Greece. This will start on June 20, 2017. As of right now, prices are looking like S$484 ($359 USD) or S$318 ($236 USD) on sale one-way, which is not terrible. They say they won't have movies though, which is a bummer on an 11-hour flight. I imagine they will have some sweet sales, though. One can only hope!


Update: AirAsia has since pushed back the date to 2018 and has said that the specific destinations in Europe are not yet known.