Earlier in the month, when unbundling was notified by law for Indian airlines to be able to charge for services, I wrote a blog post which mentioned how I expected it would work out. One of the statements I made was: a) Preferential Seating: I am looking at you Indigo, and I am thinking, you will try to sell almost all window and aisle seats as preferential seats maybe. Because you’re so money minded. However, in my wildest dreams, I had not thought that imagination at Indigo would run so wild as to charging for assignment of a middle-seat on the plane as a preferred/privileged seat as well. In doing so, they were not charging for preferred seating, which was…
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Something New: ICICI/Amex Altitude Lounge Mumbai Terminal 1A
Introduction Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Mumbai Terminal 1A Airborne: Flight AI 660 (BOM-DEL), Air India, Economy Class Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Delhi Terminal 3 Airborne: Flight AI 657 (DEL-BOM), Air India, Executive Class I arrived at the Mumbai Airport in time for the flight, in spite of the fact that it was a working day and I had a late-afternoon flight. This involved arriving at office a couple of hours earlier than usual, and skipping lunch to make the one hour plus trip across town. On arrival at the airport, I proceeded to Terminal 1A, which is currently full of banks of empty counters and only has Air India occupying the terminal. Heck, even with that, they were…
Jet Airways’ crediting 20% extra miles on 20th anniversary
Jet Airways has sent out emails to several members of the Jet Privilege program, where they are crediting 20% of the flown miles for the last 20 flights flown with Jet Airways/Jet Konnect between the period 05 May 1993 to 05 May 2013. The mileage credit is exclusive of cabin bonuses, tier bonuses or any other bonus, and has already been credited to some accounts, while some others have received the emails but not the bonus credited into their account. In case of my own family, I’ve received the credit into my account, while my mom has received the email but not the credit, and my brother and my dad have not even heard from Jet Airways. I intend to…
Something New: Introduction
Introduction Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Mumbai Terminal 1A Airborne: Flight AI 660 (BOM-DEL), Air India, Economy Class Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Delhi Terminal 3 Airborne: Flight AI 657 (DEL-BOM), Air India, Executive Class One of these times in the past couple of months I was going to visit the family in Delhi, I thought of trying out something new, or rather different from my regular experiences in the past months which usually would be Jet Airways and the regular lounges which would include the Carnations Lounge at Mumbai Terminal 1C and the Plaza Premiere Lounge at Delhi Terminal 3. Since this trip was personal and I had to book up in advance, I decided to use a couple…
Singapore Airlines Business Class: my best PremierMiles redemption till date
Not like I’ve been swarming in PremierMiles, but I’ve been able to make some good transfers over the past 18 or so months to get the best value out of my PremierMiles. And while I’d encourage you to participate in this poll where I am trying to figure out how do you guys use your miles, here is a flight I just stepped off which is perhaps my best redemption of PremierMiles till date. I spent the past week travelling to the other side of the globe for the Boarding Area Conference, and then, on the way back, got a flat tire, and also stopped by in NYC for a bit. On the way back to Mumbai, I wanted to…
Is Club Carlson considering a program revamp?
Club Carlson, the membership loyalty program of the Club Carlson chain of hotels, seems to be dipping its toes in the water to see if it could make a switch from a membership points and free nights oriented program to a benefits oriented program. I recently received and completed a survey from Club Carlson, where they tested this concept and while they said this may or may not fly, they even had a name in place, calling it Members Club. Now, CC has been at the forefront of big lucrative promotions and giveaways for the past two years, inflating the number of enrolments in the program, and getting the eye of the road warrior and the leisure traveller alike, in…
Poll: How do you use your India-minted miles?
Yesterday, I got involved in a Twitter debate on what is the worth of a mile earned in India, and I thought I’d put my views across on the blog to share with all of you and hear what do you have to say. This will be a series which will focus on valuing the key mileage currencies in India. For earning capabilities in India, there are 4 kind of miles one could earn and accumulate, using different ways. Here they are: Jet Privilege miles: Earn them by flying the airline or its partners, or credit card spends, or multiple program partners who are listed on the airline’s website. Air India miles: Earn them by flying Air India/Singapore Airlines/Lufthansa. Citibank…
Streetside eating in NYC
Like some of you know, I trekked all the way from Mumbai to Colorado Springs (via AUH,JFK/LGA, DEN) to meet the Boarding Area set of bloggers and some other awesome bloggers for a weekend conference (sort of thing!) mixed with a tequila night and other fun stuff made possible by Randy Petersen and the House of Miles crew. While I’ll discuss that on the blog later, on the way out, I thought I’d build in a couple of days in the schedule to pop into New York and soak in the city (always a good idea!), apart from meeting friends I haven’t met in a while. I had a schedule mess, and I eventually arrived in NYC a full 12…
Sorry AJ, no TSA-Pre for you!
Err, I know the sense of entitlement this post evokes, but stay with me, and hear my story of le-sigh and disappointment. The title of this post the exact words I heard from the TSA this evening at JFK. I am flying the American Airlines First Class in their 3-class Flagship Service First Class today, in fact this post is being written somewhere up in the air right now. This made me eligible to use the brand new Flagship Check-In service introduced by American Airlines earlier this month at Terminal 8, New York JFK. After a red carpet experience with American’s staff at JFK, the agent at the check-in counter hands me back my Indian passport and my boarding pass,…
Citibank PremierMiles enhances mileage earning from June 2013
I’ve been an ardent fan of the Citibank PremierMiles Credit Card. I believe its a secular mileage-earning credit card, and pays you a good amount of miles for your travel spends, specifically airline bookings, and I rate it high up there in my mileage earning CC 101. However, I’ve been disappointed a bit this past year, since they lost Jet Airways as a mileage transfer partner, and capped off the limit for mileage earning on tickets to Rs. 500,000 per annum, amongst other devaluations. However, seems like some of these changes are out of the window, and there are some real ‘enhancements’ in the true sense of the word and not how rhetorically airlines/credit cards/loyalty programs use the term these…
I got a flat tire on a plane!
On my way back from the Boarding Area Conference (BACon) at Colorado Springs which ended today, I was booked on a very simple route to get to New York via Dallas/Fort Worth in the afternoon. If all would have been well, I’d have been on the East Coast by now, sleeping in a hotel room in Manhattan. However, it was not to be. Once we were seated on our slightly delayed flight, the captain informed us we had a flat tire on the plane, which could happen on landing at high altitude airports such as COS, and as such, they won’t be able to move before the tire was changed. The good news, he said was, they had a tire…
