With the airline no longer in existence, Amex finally pulled the plug on their co-branded credit card partnership with Kingfisher. All existing cardholders have been sent out individual letters (not emails, not announcements on the website…) about the decision of Amex to part ways with KFA. This could partly also be the influence of their recent partnership with Jet Airways for a credit card. Here are the key details of what will happen now on for the existing KFA credit card holders: Amex is replacing all the KFA cards with the Amex Platinum Travel card and all the card holders will receive the new card in their mail in a few days from now. Here are some details of the…
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Air India’s attempt to sneak into Star Alliance
Air India seems to be making all the right moves while its competitor for the Star Alliance membership Jet Airways is busy trying to make a strategic alliance with Etihad. What I cannot figure out is, why was the Indian Civil Aviation ministry’s unnamed officials making all the noises about the conversations between 9W/EY before it was formally announced. Anyways, as per more noises from the said ministry and a newspaper report published today, seems like Air India and the ministry (the owner of Air India) are reaching out to the member airlines of the Star Alliance to get them to vote in favour of Air India joining the alliance. They also insist that airlines are conveying to the civil…
My experiences with OlaCabs
When in Mumbai, the black and yellow cabs are my friend. However, there are days you need a car to wait on you, or it is sultry enough in a city like Mumbai to pop into an airconditioned radio cabs. I’ve had it with the regular fleet cab services such as Meru, Mega, TabCabs and what have you, primarily because the cabs do not provide a fleet cab experience anymore. Since demand far outstrips supply, many a times it is a game of dice. You sometimes get a confirmed cab booking or a last minute text message saying the cab company has no cabs to allocate. Cue to flagging a cab on the road to the airport or wherever… All…
American Express devalues Membership Rewards in India
It is old news that Amex in India has been devaluing the Membership Rewards. A year back, Amex reduced the number of MR one could earn on a few types of payments and even imposed a Rs. 250 fee for redeeming on airline miles. While the website has no indication of this devaluation, members are being individually informed via their statements. Here are the transfer partners who are now changed from 1.6 MR = 1 FFP to 2 MR = 1 FFP, with effect from 16 January 2013: British Airways Cathay Pacific Etihad Airways Finnair Singapore Airlines Thai Airways Virgin Atlantic These are all of the airline transfer partners that American Express India has in India, apart from Jet Airways…
Miles make memories, o yeah!
I usually take commercials with a pinch of salt, but sometimes they do strike a chord somewhere. The MasterCard Priceless was one of those. And I’m writing this on a travel and mileage blog for the precise reason that there are slice-of-life priceless moments that your miles make possible. One of these happened with me less than 36 hours ago. Ever since I moved out of Delhi somewhere in the 2000s, I try and meet up the folks as much as possible, however, sometimes time and sometimes circumstances limit the occurrence. We still try and come together on special occasions. I was just back from my mileage run earlier in the week, and I was not even thinking of getting…
1,000 JPMiles for completing a survey
Jet Airways sent out a survey few days ago, in tie-up with a hotel chain is circulating a survey for some feedback. The survey takes about 10 minutes to fill, and Jet Airways is offering you 1,000 JP Miles for this effort. Here is the email, and you can follow the link: Dear _____ , We understand that your time is important, but we would be delighted to credit your account with 1,000 JPMiles for a few minutes of your time. We, in association with one of our partners, are conducting a survey on ‘Luxury Hotel Experiences in India’. We would sincerely appreciate, if you could tell us what criteria you use to choose your favourite hotels during your business…
So American Air cannot make butter chicken…
After I booked up my trip to the US on American Air and their oneworld partner British Airways, I received an email from AA inviting me to pre-select my meal on one of the segments on the trip, which was going to be a lunch flight from Seattle to Dallas/Fort Worth. This feature is still experimental so only on a few flights do passengers get the option to pre-select their entrees. Obviously, I was going to take this experiment for a test-drive. Here are snapshots of what came my way on the particular flight: Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 So, when I did select the entree here and took the screenshots, I felt like some Salmon. However, later during…
Indigo reshuffles South-East Asia, cuts BOM/DEL-SIN and BKK
While there is no official announcement from Indigo on this, they have apparently pruned their Singapore operations from Mumbai and Delhi, as well as Mumbai to Bangkok. Reservations for BOM-SIN-BOM (6E051/052), DEL-SIN-DEL (6E011/012) are closed for flights from 1st March 2013. Also, Indigo is closing Mumbai – Bangkok route and reservations on 6E071/072 have been closed. It looks like Indigo could not keep up with being an unknown brand in the other market. Using just a web-based ticketing system, Indigo is not present on the Global Distribution Systems such Amadeus & Sabre which are used by Travel Agents worldwide to source and issue tickets. Over the years, on the Singapore route, there have been flights offered by Air India, Jet…
Pondicherry finally gets air connectivity
Pondicherry is one of my favourite towns in South India, although I must admit I last went there quite some time back, maybe 5 years or more. This little French post of yore has very good weather, good food, some good hotels as well. The trouble, it never had an airport when I used to be there. So, one had to get to Chennai (MAA), and drive from there on the scenic East Coast Road to get to Pondicherry. Now, I was completely unaware that they were building an airport there, infact their own little tourism website states Chennai to be the closest airport. But as per Wikipedia, there has been an airport in the making here. As per the…
Kingfisher is no more, officially!
There was a lot of discussion going on about reviving Kingfisher Airlines in the past months, after the airline stopped operations in October 2012. Over the past few weeks and months, it made noises that it was serious about getting back in the aviation game, and was going to pay its employees as well before it could get started again. Employees were given some bit of their salaries, 3 months of the 7 months outstanding before they returned to work. Eventually, the Indian regulator got into the act and ‘suspended’ Kingfisher’s airline operation license. They also refused to approve the winter schedule of the airline. Vijay Mallya has been trying to offload his stake in the airline to another investor,…
Air India goes 787 on Delhi Paris CDG from January 2013
Air India is flush with their Boeing 787s now, and as per the recent reports have received 4 Boeing 787 planes as of December 31, 2012. Since September 2012, when they took delivery of the first plane, the 787’s are now in operation on various domestic as well as international segments for Air India. They are frequently found on DEL-BLR-DEL, DEL-MAA-DEL, DEL-CCU-DEL in the domestic skies. Internationally, Air India first put them out on the Delhi – Dubai segment (DEL-DXB-DEL), and then introduced a flight to Frankfurt on the 787s in October 2012. Air India says the 787 has made this route operationally profitable. With the addition of new planes, now the next route which is intended to be moved…
