And just a few days back, again without much fanfare, the airline announced on itsFacebook page that its mobile service is back in action for the iPhone , downloadable free at Apple iTunes store.

As described on its Facebook page, the app is “fresher and a whole lot sexier! Making travelling a whole lot easier, you can now search, book your flights and pre-book your meals, baggage weight, sport equipment and other ancillary products! We even have our ‘On-board Menu’ with full visuals for you to pick from. We’re even bringing back everybody’s favourite function, the Mobile Check-in with 2D bar code! What’s more, you can now carry our handy-dandy Travel Guide direct with our App! Available in 8 local languages…”

While it does deliver what it says and it is aesthetically pleasing, the most glaring omission is, it doesn’t have a function to check your flight booking. This means you have to look up your booking in your email confirming your flight before you can check in on the mobile.

As the app does not have a login service, it means you don’t have access to your AirAsia account to check your booking history or other details.

The Travel Guide section presently features Malaysia only. I assume AirAsia has plans to include in the other countries it flies to.

But the biggest hassle is the app keeps asking me to reset and start session all over again – “Your session has expired, please reload” – every few minutes. This is a big turnoff.

Considering this is a new “app”, why does AirAsia, known for being tech savvy, not have it support the iPhone’s new Passport on iOS 6? And why isn’t it optimised for the new iPhone 5?

As one of its Facebook fans commented, “This seems to be a simple wrapper for a webview? Basically just HTML5 and therefore much slower than a real native app. And also: the functionality is VERY LIMITED. Passbook? Account login? Quick check-in?…”

Although the majority of the fans were not happy with the app in its present state, there were some positive comments. A sampling of the comments:

From unhappy fans: “Where is feature to check current booking?”; “Can’t seem to check flight status with this new app?!?!”; “iPhone 5 optimize please.”; “I found few bugs”.

AirAsia should have released the “app” when it is fully functional sans the bugs and glitches, and with all the functions it is meant to deliver. I think I’ll stick to the website for now to book and check-in.

Note: The Android app is now available on Google Play. The Blackberry version will be launched soon.