Jet Airways and American Express have been together for roughly two years now, and American Express has decided it needs to freshen up the product. So, in this spirit, multiple efforts have happened in the past few months. The new changes come into effect from October 20, 2014.

Firstly, American Express dropped the 1st year pricing on this card to INR 5000 along with 10000 JP Miles for sign up, with 2nd year pricing continuing to be INR 10,000. You could add another 2,000 JP Miles by taking your card via a referral. They also added 7 lounges earlier this year, although for JP co-branded cards, these were paid lounges and not free.

Some good and some bad changes coming up to the card.

Mileage Earning is being devalued:

Till so far, you earned 6 JP Miles/INR 100 spent for every spend, and 12 JP Miles/INR 100 spent for Jet Airways website. Now, you will earn 8 JPMiles/INR 150 spent and 16 JP Miles/INR 100 spent for Jet Airways (website). This is a 12% devaluation in the number of JP Miles you can earn for your spend.

The bigger change is the removal of following categories from earning any JP Miles at all:

• Insurance payments
• Fuel, including petrol, diesel, CNG from oil marketing companies
• Utilities, including electricity, water and gas.

Lounge access is being enhanced:

Earlier this year, Jet Airways notified a list of lounges which you could use for INR 500 per visit with your Jet Airways co-branded credit card. This apart from the Mumbai and Delhi Amex lounges. Now, you can use the following lounges free of cost across India (only to primary cardmembers).

Here is a review of some of these lounges: Mumbai Amex Lounge & Bengaluru Plaza Premium Lounge.

Membership to Trident’s Privilege Program at the Gold Tier

Complimentary membership for the Trident Hotel’s loyalty program is being added. You will get the Gold Tier to start for 2 years, along with 2 room upgrade vouchers. If you stay at the Trident Hotels, which is the business hotel brand for the Oberoi Hotels, you should be happy about this move. Benefits include:

• Express check in and check out
• Early check in (Subject to availability)
• Late check out till 3 p.m. (subject to availability)
• Double Occupancy at no extra charges
• 50% savings on rack rate of suites on weekends (Friday to Sunday)

Complimentary night’s stay for at Oberoi properties

For some of the Oberoi properties, you get to stay one night extra with all benefits for 3 nights/2 nights paid stays. The details are here.

Essentially, no ground breaking enhancements unless you use this as your sole travel credit card, and personally I’d continue to keep my JP Amex in my pocket, but allocate only the relevant spend to this card.

How do you feel about these changes to the JP Amex card?

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