Though all was good with travel plans to Indonesia but then came across this article yesterday:
http://www.theage.com.au/business/aviation/indonesia-airasia…
Turns out this was not the first time it happened:
http://m.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/airasia-x-passenger…
Wish I did my research before I bought the tickets in July. Anyway I contacted AirAsia via LiveChat and this was the very short fun chat before I was brutally disconnected:
Emir
As of now there is no confirmation about that issue and flights are on as usual
Me
This is not the first time this has happened with AirAsiaX and I have no faith it will be the last. The tickets in July were sold to passengers while approval already was non-existant
Emir
As of now there is no confirmation about that issue and flights are on as usual
Me
The issue is current and ongoing. The issue itself is well and truly confirmed. The only thing which is not confirmed is your ability to guarantee that flights are not at risk.
Considering that AirAsiaX is already under class action lawsuit from travellers who were stranded in February I don't think you are in any position to guarantee anything.
Emir
Kindly be advice that as of now flights are on as usual and if there is any changes to the flight schedule then Airasia will notify the passangers beforehand on any changes
We regret to inform that the 10mins chat session will be ending shortly. Thus, this chat will be disconnected automatically soon. Should you have further inquiries, please come back to us again. Thank you.
Love the "10mins chat" session hangup excuse. There IS NO upfront indication of anything resembling a time limit on Live Chat queries.
So far there hasn't been any formal response from AirAsiaX about potential groundings.
Altomic says it best right here: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/210275#comment-3031368
As for selling tickets before regulatory approval is granted, this is commonplace. If they couldn't, planes would fly empty at first, making the whole exercise deeply unprofitable.
The upshot of this is the airasia X MEL-DPS fiasco last christmas, where aprroval wasn't granted until after the date when flights were to resume, so passengers ended up having to go to Bali via KL, obviously p*ssing a LOT of passengers off.