A couple of months back, a long standing decision of the Indian government to not allow the Airbus A380 planes in India was changed. As of end January, various carriers from around the globe were free to launch their A380 services to India. This was something I had also put out in my post on the predictions for Indian Aviation in 2014. While it has been expected that Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines will both start regular commercial operations with their A380s to India, it was a quest of who will do it first. And Singapore Airlines will take that cake. From May 30, 2014 onwards, Singapore Airlines is upgrading 1 service per day to Mumbai, which was earlier operated by…
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Amex Travel Services: Plain Dumb?
I’ve been working to explore the feature set of my American Express Platinum Charge Card, which I finally acquired a couple of months back after all they threw in INR 40,000 worth of Taj Vouchers along with the other goodies. One of the things I’ve been looking forward to using is their Travel Services, which is basically a travel agent on the phone. Now, being American Express and all that, you’d expect that the Travel Counsellors, as they are called, would do a thorough job of researching the properties and flights before they’d send you a quote. My expectation of an offline travel agent, at least some of the good ones I work with, is that they don’t just want…
Jet Airways cuts Paris frequency before starting the route
Jet Airways, which has been recently seen to expand its international route network again to a small extent (most new flights go to Abu Dhabi!), had planned to add a daily service to Paris from Mumbai back in January 2014. At least, that is what they said when they put out the official announcement on their website, and added a double miles promotion to the route for the first couple of months. Have a look at the earlier announcement. Now, without any explanation, this frequency has come down from 7 days a week to 4 days a week, this even before the route started. As per the latest on their website, the flight will now be operated Thursday through Sunday…
DGCA asks SpiceJet to stop INR 1 tickets/ SG fights back
SpiceJet has been at the receiving end of undue attention from the Indian regulator for civil aviation (DGCA) for a while now. Last month, DGCA pulled them up for a little song and dance on their planes for celebrating Holi. Although the charges such as “The frequent movement of the dancing crew may have affected the aircraft’s centre of gravity during flight and created turbulence” were frivolous, DGCA stuck it out till it made the airline bend and commit that they’d ask for permissions before doing a similar thing in the future. Yesterday, I wrote about the SpiceJet sale for INR 1 tickets. While I could not locate tickets suiting my travel plans, many a folks did manage to secure…
Upto 50K Miles & More Miles Bonus returns with Axis Bank Credit Card
Axis Bank took over the the Miles & More co-branded credit cards portfolio in Q1 2013, and had been offering an accelerated bonus of up to 20000 miles on signing up the card before March 15, 2014 and spending at certain benchmarks. The promotion has now returned for a brief while, for card applications received till April 15, 2014. In summary, there are two Axis Bank Miles & More credit cards on offer: M&M Axis Bank MasterCard World: This is the lower version of the credit cards, and comes with 5000 miles after first transaction, and 4 miles for every INR 200 of eligible spend. The joining fee is INR 3,500 and the annual fee from the second year is…
Spicejet offering INR 1 base fare flights till March 2015
Another SpiceJet sale? I have seen a lot of these sales this year but this one takes the cake. SpiceJet has dropped prices to INR 1. The next slabs are INR 799 and INR 1499. Tickets can be booked between 1st and 3rd April 2014, for travel between 1st July 2014 to 28th March 2015. The discounts, as per SpiceJet should only be on the new flights introduced. However, they are pretty randomly scattered all over the place. Now, while the detailed terms and conditions say there is no fuel surcharge on the INR 1 tickets, the fuel surcharge is indeed being charged on the INR 1 tickets at some points (highlighted). Here are the T&C: The offer is valid…
Jet Airways discontinues 20% online redemption discounts
I’ve held off speculating on this for the longest time but I guess this is no longer in the realm of speculation. A couple of years back, Jet Airways came up with a marvellous proposition to upset everyone who thought the JetPrivilege program was going south. They introduced a 20% off on the number of miles on domestic redemptions, as long as these were made via the JetAirways.com website. They went on to extend this promotion for 6 months at a time, while other airlines such as Singapore Airlines offer an online discount as a permanent feature of their program (at 15% off). It is a good move in a way, because you’re limiting supply to an outer limit of…
Review: Courtyard by Marriott Hotel, Kochi Airport
Mumbai Airport Terminal 2 Clipper Lounge, Mumbai Terminal 2 Clipper Lounge Cochin Air India 682, Cochin – Mumbai, Economy My flight from Mumbai to Cochin was uneventful, and on a very very old Air India plane, still painted in Indian Airlines livery. I did not want to write a separate review for both legs so I will cover it later on my return leg. Once I arrived at Cochin Airport, I spotted a shuttle car from the hotel to bring us over to the hotel. The hotel is less than a kilometre away from the airport, and complimentary shuttle service is provided. The decision to stay at the Courtyard by Marriott, closer to the airport and outside of town by…
Lots of miles and status to come with Citi Prestige in India
A couple of weeks back I wrote about the Citibank Prestige Credit Card, which I expect to be offered by Citibank as a replacement to the Ultima as of April 2014. There are a lot more signup benefits which will be on their way, and some of them are enlisted below: Etihad Gold: The cardholder will be eligible for Etihad’s Gold Status, which allows for 50% bonus miles and business class lounge access. Miles on signup: You’ll get 5000 Etihad miles on sign-up for the card and 5000 Avios. BA Executive Club: Possibly, you’ll also get a one-tier upgrade on the BA Executive Club membership. So, if you’re base tier, you’d be upgraded to Bronze. Additionally, there will be discounts…
Free AwardWallet upgrades going away
It has been a while since I’ve gave away some AwardWallet+ codes for my readers. Like some regular readers would know, AwardWallet is a service that allows me to access my own and my family’s mileage balances in one place. AwardWallet provides a free account, which tracks all your accounts for free, but only displays upto 3 expiration notices. There is also AwardWallet Plus, which costs you $5 upwards for 6 months (you choose the price), and allows for details on all your accounts to be tracked along with the expiry notices. Now, if you haven’t had an AwardWallet account ever, you could sign up for a free 6-months usage of AwardWallet Plus with the following Coupon Code while signing…
Get hitched at a Starwood hotel in India/APAC, get upto 150K SPG points
Starwood released a promotion earlier this month targeting couples who are getting married, offering them 3 points per US$ spent up to 150,000 SPG points for booking their wedding celebrations at a participating Starwood property by July 1, 2014 and getting hitched before March 31, 2015. Promotion is valid across the Asia Pacific, with few hotels as exceptions. In India, all Starwood properties apart from ITC Mughal, ITC Kakatiya, Le Meredien New Delhi, The Westin Gurgaon and The Westin Sohna Resort & Spa are excluded. There are two ways of getting SPG points in this promotion: Wedding banquet (food, beverage and function room rental) contract must be signed with the hotel between 1 March and 1 July 2014, and wedding…
