My God, Ryanair's Michael O'Leary would have a heart attack if he saw this. I'm standing in the check-in queue for Britain's first long-haul, no-frills flight to Asia, and they are handing out free booze. OK, it's just a comically small glass of whisky (or sweets for teetotallers), and it's purely to mark the launch of AirAsia X's new route from London Stansted to Kuala Lumpur (99 quid one way if you got in early enough) - but still, this is budget travel. We demand to suffer. Thankfully for Tony Fernandes, the businessman behind this new venture, it's the last freebie we see for the next 13 hours.
As we budget guinea-pigs join the queue at check-in, horror stories swirl about non-reclining seats and the lack of legroom. There's even a suggestion that if you don't book a meal in advance, you'll just have to starve. I haven't, needless to say, booked a meal in advance.
Yet check-in is brisk and efficient: six desks are open to take our bags and allocate us - surely some mistake - preassigned seats. I am struck by the predominantly young-European-backpacker feel of my fellow travellers; Fernandes says he sees much of his business coming from budget travellers using the Malaysian capital as a hub for other destinations.
Ryan, a 33-year-old electrician standing behind me in the queue, is moving to Melbourne with his girlfriend to start a new life. "I tried to book as soon as I heard about the £99 deal last November," he says. Sadly he missed out (only about a fifth of travellers, says AirAsia X, will travel for the rock-bottom fare) and had to settle for a - still rather impressive - £171 one-way fare. A tall chap, Ryan admits he is concerned about the legroom.
There is a smattering of older travellers. Middle-aged Phillipe, from France, has gone the whole budget hog by first taking the coach from France to London for this flight, for which he forked out a still reasonable €260 (£240).
As we prepare to board, a young woman tells her friend on the phone that the plane is a 10-year-old Air Canada Airbus A340-300, leased for one year to AirAsia X to test the viability of the route. Intrigued at this inside knowledge, I quiz her. Zoe turns out to be a 35-year-old social worker for Barnado's who is heading off for a three-week trip around Asia. She did manage to nab one of the coveted £99 tickets - £200 for the return trip - but claims it was a lucky accident of timing. Her informant about our plane is Benny from the Netherlands, a self-confessed airline nerd who ferreted out the information about this flight on some obscure airline-nerd website. He says he booked because Air Canada seats have a good reputation among the air-geek fraternity. A breath of hope amid the mounting dread?
Joanna, 22, and Veronica, 21, from Copenhagen, have two slightly eccentrically paired concerns. "We're worried the plane will crash, and the seats will be too small," says Joanna. Not an issue shared by 24-year-old Norhaizi, who is heading home to Malaysia after four years studying accountancy. "My mum tipped me off about it," she says. "She said Airbuses are better than Boeings."
Thirtysomething honeymoon couple Alpa and Kamles, meanwhile, have been told that they will be upgraded for the flight as a wedding present. What does that mean, exactly?
"Bigger seats, I think," says Kamles.
Finally we board, and I'm in for a shock. The legroom is not just OK, it feels rather generous. There are eight seats across the cabin, with two aisles running between the pairs of window seats and a central island of four. Even though the seats are reportedly 15.8in wide, rather than the standard 16in, and the pitch between the rows of seats (the distance between one point on a seat and the identical point on the seat in front) is 30in compared with the usual 32, it doesn't feel a problem. And yes, contrary to rumour, the seats even recline. Quite a bit.
Sitting next to me are a trio of Spaniards, Carlos, Pedro and Katia, who are planning to bum around Thailand, Laos and Vietnam for a few months. They are also impressed. "The backs of the seats are low," says Katia. "And the stewardesses are sexy," says Carlos. "Write that down." But he would like a seat-back DVD player.
Perhaps what Carlos means is that the cabin crew don't exude a budget feel: the stewardesses are dressed in sharp red outfits, the stewards in black with red trim. And they don't seem particularly harassed by their backpacker charges; when I press my call button, I get a pretty swift response every time.
However, I turn down the offer of a £7 comfort kit (blanket, inflatable pillow and eye-cover). This is a budget flight, after all. On the way to the toilet (no charge), I bump into Zoe who, though she has been billeted in a double seat (the flight is only about 90% full), finds herself, to her horror, right next to the toilets.
I also come across Ryan the electrician, who is sitting next to an exit door with no seat in front of him and an obscene amount of legroom. He sheepishly admits he forked out "about 20 quid extra" for the seat after looking at a plan of the plane online. And he acquired a free comfort kit from somewhere! Uber-nerd Benny, meanwhile, is a bit disappointed that he has to wait a couple of hours after take-off to get a (£1) bottle of water.
Before dinner, I sneak up to "XL" class, as it's known, right at the front of the plane, to check on the upgraded honeymooners Alpa and Kamles, who are already tucking into their food (there's a choice of Malaysian or European). It has, at first glance, the feel of a first-class lounge. The seats are gigantic and go virtually flat; and the couple look justifiably pleased with their small coup. Until they learn that an upgrade doesn't absolve them from paying for stuff just like the rest of us - which leads one to wonder quite what the point of the first-class budget option is.
I have to fork out £6 for dinner - a small portion of chicken and potatoes plus a can of lager. Thankfully, the rumours about having to book food in advance are nonsense - although, oddly, the booze is rather discreetly tucked away deep in the trolley. I actually have to ask if they have any.
The Spaniards (high culinary standards) are horrified by the dinner. "It wasn't hot enough, there was no taste, no bread and I have to cut my chicken with a spoon because there wasn't a knife," says Carlos. "And 250ml of wine costs €5. And there's no dessert. And the bottled water isn't even cold."
A trifle harsh, perhaps, but the portions are meagre. An hour after dinner, Pedro cracks and forks out another few euros for a Malaysian pot noodle. Then it's time for the in-flight entertainment - £6. Rather than seat-back screens, the crew hand out portable media players with preloaded films - a decent selection including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire. There are some takers, but not as many as I would expect.
I buy another couple of bottles of water - two more quid - and doze fitfully, thanks to an overhead light that won't dim properly (are they trying to force me to buy the comfort pack?). Then it's breakfast - a quiche that, unsurprisingly, goes down badly with the Spaniards - and we're in Kuala Lumpur ahead of schedule, to be greeted by a throng of Malaysian women in traditional dress and a bevy of photographers snapping away at the bottom of the plane steps.
There is even some traditional live music on the way to baggage collection, and passport control is a breeze. I know this is the inaugural flight - but the full rock-star treatment? This doesn't happen with Ryanair.
Even so, electrician Ryan was disappointed with the price and quality of the food, but overall reckoned the flight was great value. Zoe was still rankled by the toilet thing, but had to confess that, overall, she'd been pleasantly surprised. Even Benny, a man who knows his airlines, appeared to have been won over. And the Spaniards? Well, they were still hung up on the food ... although plenty of other passengers just brought their own.
So did it feel like a budget flight? No. There was none of that cloying claustrophobia that can leave you gasping for air on a bad short-haul. Even after 13 hours in a relatively crowded part of the plane, I felt pretty relaxed. If passengers really do have less legroom than on standard long-haul flights, it is a convincing illusion to the contrary.
And am I dreading the return flight on Sunday? Well, only because 13-hour flights are always pretty grim. Would I recommend it? I have only flown long-haul to Asia once before (Lufthansa to Tokyo) and, for my money, this was a better experience. But everything did go very smoothly, perhaps because it was the inaugural flight.
If AirAsia X can keep it up, it is on to something. However, given that the average customer is spending much more than £99, is it really a budget airline at heart? Well, judging by honeymooning Alpa's experience, yes. "We didn't have a pen to fill in our immigration form," she says. "They sold us one for a quid." Now that would give Michael O'Leary's heart a warm glow.
• This correction was added on Monday 16 March 2009. AirAsia X is not the first budget long-haul airline to fly from Britain to Asia. Oasis Hong Kong Airlines, which went into liquidation in April 2008, beat them to it when it launched flights between London and Hong Kong in October 2006.
