120 AirAsia staff  last Wednesday (August 13) undertook the first ever user acceptance testing of the airline’s newly installed Wi-Fi service. The team used three popular messaging services – LINE, WhatsApp and WeChat with reportedly positive results for all three services. The team also shared live updates on the company’s official Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Instant messaging, emails and content streaming will be gradually rolled out across the entire group starting with flights with the AK code. Sixty AirAsia passengers per  flight will be able to  participate in a “free user test” of the system for the next two months.  I am on board Air Asia in a month and will be interested to see if I get a test run!

The airline intends to fully activate the on-board WiFi at the end of 2013.

Air Asia is claiming that the price of the wifi will “make it the most affordable wifi system in the air”. It  aims to use this service to help increase ancillary income to $US18.86 per passenger.

Malaysian based AirAsia flies to 100 destinations in 22 countries. It is rated a three star airline by Skytrax and passengers on that staff rate the airline at 68%. I have flown them  on short and long haul sectors 11 times and currently rate then at 66%. The company reported a drop in profit for the first part of this year as overcapacity impacted the carrier on many of its routes. It operates with the lowest unit cost of any carrier in the world.