Official Site Bumtion Network

Buying plane tickets used to be such a chore - you either had to drop by a MAS sales office or pay a visit to your neighborhood travel agent to book one - but thanks to the wonders of the Internet, we were able to bypass the hassle of running around and instead do it from the comfort of our own homes.

But regardless of however convenient the Internet has made things, booking a ticket online still takes up a fair amount of time. There are schedules to look through, fare prices to consider and accounts to register. That's all fine and dandy if you're sitting at home with time to spare, but what about the busy business traveler who are always on the move?

Well, if you're one such traveler, then fret not because MAS have launched their very own mobile portal at flymas.mobi earlier this week.

Built from the ground up specifically for the mobile platform, flymas.mobi is optimized to run best on the iPhone, but will run equally well on any other Internet enabled mobile phone. It'll even work on non-3G phones, as the site is pretty much devoid of redundant links and non-critical data or scripts.

Navigation is simple and straight to the point - so simple in fact, that you don't even need to sign up for an account/login ID. Just click on "Book Flight", and you'll be brought through a very simple 5-step procedure. Just pick a destination, select your desired time, and the lowest available fare will be automatically offered to you (unless you specifically want to travel via business or first class).

Unlike the web booking interface that only lets you buy tickets up to 12 hours from the time of flight, flymas.mobi allows you to buy a ticket as close as 3 hours away. However, tickets can only be bought up to 7 days in advance. This was specifically implemented to facilitate the hectic and erratic schedule of the hardcore traveler. Payment is only accepted via credit card, but don't worry, because flymas.mobi uses the same payment gateway as it's web counterpart.

Upon successful purchase, a unique confirmation code will be sent to your mobile phone via SMS, and this can be used for a variety of things - everything from checking your flight status, to tracing your luggage, and if you're flying domestic or to Singapore it will also act as your boarding pass. How cool is that?

IMHO, I think that flymas.mobi is a wonderful move forward for MAS. I tried booking a flight via the mobile portal and in all honesty, I found it more straight forward than via the conventional web portal. Having said that, do keep in mind though that tickets can only be booked up to 7 days in advance as opposed to the many months ahead on the web portal.