10 reviews
We travelled to Cambodia in December. We managed to book Bamboo airways using Aeroplan to Vietnam, but it wasn't possible to connect to Cambodia. So, that meant we got a chance to try the national airline of Cambodia - Cambodia Angkor Air.
Unfortunately, our Bamboo flight was delayed by 2.5 hours leading to some chaos.
I thought I should highlight this first since it is a major challenge.
Due to the aforementioned delay, we about 80 minutes to pass immigration, pick up our bags and re-checkin.
We were aware of the delay when we left Sydney, but K6 dont have options to change/cancel the flights online. We tried calling them, but only to find out their call centres are only open during working hours. We sent them an email, but no response on that front either. Even during the Saturday working hours, they didnt seem to pick up. So, try not to put yourself in a situation where you might need to change your flight with K6.
Of course, immigration was very busy, it was Christmas eve. We already had a Vietnam visa so we were thinking to just stay overnight at SGN but gave the Vietnam airlines transfer desk a chance to see if they could do anything. I was very pessimistic as they don't have any obligation to help us as we booked 2 separate tickets.
VN codeshare with K6 and they successfully managed issue boarding passes at-least. They were obviously very clear that they wouldnt do it again for us, but will make an exception in this case. I fully understand this and was already grateful for them trying to help us in this way.
They even took a photo of our Bamboo tags and our luggage and promised us they will transfer it on our behalf. They said if they cant make out the luggage for this flight, they will put it on the next flight. No luggage receipt tags however, which will make our ability to claim insurance, etc very unlikely.
You do get 23kg of luggage with the ticket.
Not much to add here as we were in a rush. The international transit seems to be fairly efficient as there is only one terminal for international.
We were boarding from a bus gate. Cambodia mandates masks on flights at the time, so we had to buy one prior to boarding the bus.
Some bonus planespotting during the bus ride. The remote stands were quite far away which allowed for this.
This is our A320 aircraft for today. There are 2 of these in K6's fleet. They also have a A321.
The seats are in a typical 3-3 configuration. There are 180 rows, so seat pitch is very dense and not much legroom (I am 5 11 and felt it was cramped). Seats had individual air nozzles
There was the Angkor magazine. It was from April-Jun 2021, so not updated very often. But still had some good information. No WIFI, etc.
We were all given a bottle of water, which is perfectly fine. This flight is only 30 minutes.
Flight arrived 30 minutes early due to the short flying time. The cruising altitude was only 14000ft, which the aircraft stayed at for maybe 1-2 minutes. You get two pieces of paper for immigration, one is blue and other is yellow. Make sure to keep the yellow one for the departure flight out of Cambodia.
Only one of our luggage made the flight. It didnt have any bag tags on it. We completed a lost baggage report and went to the hotel. The next day, we realised that the same flight was the only connection between SGN and PNH and so, we decided to try our luck. To our surprise, the second bag made this flight. It just had the RUSH sticker on it.
If you want to take a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh in the interest of saving time, then Cambodia Angkor Air will do the job perfectly fine. For a 30 minute flight, there is nothing to complain about in the flight itself.
Just note about the contact centre and make sure you don't put yourself in tight situations like we got ourself into.
4 Comments
Worst customer service ever. Actually, non-existent!! "Contact us... but it doesn't mean we'll contact you!" lol
Nice touch that of the inflight magazine and the bottle of water, though.
Kudos to the staff who cared for your luggage, too.
I hope you enjoyed your time in Cambodia! Thanks for sharing!
Not only do they codeshare, they owned K6 until very recently and believe they still have a big role in managing K6
Glad it worked out with the ticket re-issue
Understandably! An A320ceo in a Y180 configuration has a maximum pitch of 29" in forward rows but a knee-crushing industry minimum 28" pitch in most of the rows.
Hah, yes good advice! I've learned the hard way over the years not to book connections tightly when I have two separate reservations. Heck, I don't usually even do same day connections anymore, I try to build in an overnight so as to be super safe.
Thanks for sharing!
All valid points and I have also learnt know to leave the overnight to rest up :)
Login to post a comment.