One of the most painful parts of travel for me is the various cancellation/change charges imposed by airlines. This, for me, was reason enough to maintain loyalty with Jet Airways because their policies at the top end were no questions asked. With Vistara, they made different policies, where only direct bookings counted for changes, but no free cancellations were offered.

Axis Bank Cleartrip Rewards

While Axis Bank was in the throes of changes with its credit card product portfolio, it also quietly launched a travel booking product with Cleartrip, which continues to be one of India’s quietest but best travel booking products. The Axis Bank Cleartrip Rewards are offered on paying for your bookings with Axis Bank Credit Cards.

The travel benefits offered on the cards are differentiated according to the card you hold, and each booking applies the relevant coupon code after checking your card’s BIN number. The offer is valid once per card per week, and the limit resets every Monday.

As you can see above, there are three tiers of benefits:

• VIP (coupon code CTVIP), applicable for bookings with the Burgundy Private, Magnus, Reserve and other HNI cards: As long as your ticket is worth INR 4000+, you don’t have to pay a convenience fee. Additionally, you get a flat INR 500 off on the meal, which is handy for bookings on LCCs such as Akasa and IndiGo. You save about 250-300 INR for the convenience fee, and then you get a flat 500 off on meals, which usually covers most combinations on IndiGo (apart from some rare stuff that goes up to INR 600). You get a flat INR 1,200 off on seats, which means the first row on IndiGo and Akasa is primarily accessible (although not free). On Air India and Vistara, you must also pay for seat selection, so this code makes it easy to assign seats for free.
• Lounge (coupon code CTLOUNGE), applicable for bookings with Axis Select, Axis Vistara, Atlas and other Affluent cards: Your minimum ticket price per passenger should be INR 4000. You get a flat INR 500 discount on seat costs, which means you can pick most seats on the plane for free, apart from the front and exit rows, which are usually priced higher. That is the only difference between VIP and Lounge.
• Club (coupon code CTCLUB), applicable for bookings with Myzone, Neo and other Retail cards: Your minimum ticket price per passenger should be INR 4000. You get a flat INR 300 discount on seat costs and INR 350 discount on meals.

These benefits can come in handy when travelling with the LCC and FSC carriers, where everyone is always up to making you pony up cash for the seat assignment. I recently used this benefit for a ticket booked on IndiGo. As you can see, I could pick a seat and a meal without extra cost.

The benefits under this offer are provided on a per-passenger basis for each booking. For example, if a booking is made for six passengers, all six are individually eligible for the benefits under this offer. The only catch is that your minimum transaction value per passenger should be INR 4,000, and you are booking domestic trips (one-way or round trip).

Free Cancellation and changes with CT FLEX MAX

Cleartrip offers a product called CT FLEX MAX, which offers one free date/airline change or one free cancellation (duh!) per passenger as long as the ticket is booked within 90 days from the travel date.

You can either cancel or reschedule at least 24 hours before flight departure.

• For cancellations, you get the entire refund amount, excluding the convenience fee (which is zero for payment with Axis Bank Credit Cards)
• To reschedule, you pay just the fare difference.

CTFLEXMAX is included in the Axis Bank suite of benefits for a nominal INR 1 charge (usually INR 449, I believe). Each traveller gets a one-time free cancellation or rescheduling request eligibility for date and airline change. The changes can be made for all travellers together, or each one individually. You cannot use this add-on within 24 hours of departure but well before that.

If you avail of CT Flex Max and cancel the transaction (full or partial), the entire benefit availed for the Seats, meals and convenience fee, along with the total ticket price (including taxes), will be refunded.

I am usually cautious of these promotional offers, but I got to try it out on a trip this past week. I’d booked IndiGo for my return from Mumbai to Delhi after the Air India Express event. However, then Air India Express announced their flight, so I wanted to be on that one rather than this IndiGo flight. Had I not bought the MAX package for INR 1, I would have been looking at losing INR 3,500 (and I may not have switched), but I cancelled the ticket about 30 hours out and was told I’d get a full refund shortly. WOW. The refund was back on the card within 48 hours or so.

Bottomline

Axis Bank has generated yet another hit customer promotion, where customers stand to benefit by paying for travel with their Axis Bank Credit Cards. The promotion gets you a free seat and a meal on non-stop domestic air travel booked in India for travel within the next 90 days, and for the higher-end cards, it also gets you a free change/cancellation.

Have you used the Axis Bank x Cleartrip Rewards promotion? What do you make of it?

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