You must be wondering why I haven’t spoken much about this card yet. A few weeks back I’d detailed the launch of the Jet Airways ICICI Bank Credit Card range, and also how it was a better product than the HDFC Bank Jet Airways Credit Card. Somehow, the actual delivery of the card to the customers was delayed, but I now hear things are all good to go, and card applications are all set and being processed. ICICI Bank had launched a pre-booking offer, offering 50% bonus on the welcome miles they were going to provide. So, with the highest end card, i.e., Sapphiro, you could earn up to 5,000 bonus JP Miles over and above the 10K you were…
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Citibank PremierMiles offers 30% transfer bonus on British Airways Avios & 20% on Etihad Guest miles
I don’t know if Citi is playing catch up with the American Express offer for 30% bonus miles on Avios transfers / Etihad Guest Miles or it is their own initiative, but they just got some new brownie points in my book. I’d been secretly wondering if there were ever going to be bonus offers on mileage transfers via Citi PM, but looks like Christmas did come early. For those of who look to redeem your miles for international travel, I find British Airways Avios to be an acceptable program over some other partners Citibank has for their card. Delta – bad availability, Singapore Airlines – expensive (as compared to others), Etihad – very expensive redemptions. With BA’s distance based…
Have you ever been to a vegetarian washroom at a chain hotel?
I happened to notice on the stream of a follower on Twitter, who is a bigtime traveller for work, a picture he posted from the Marriott Pune. Essentially, Shakahari means Vegetarian in Hindi, and it is the name of one of the restaurants at the hotel. The hotel does not seem to realise the goof-up yet. I hope you can! I hope you could make sense of what went wrong here… Live From A Lounge is present on Facebook, Twitter & available via email, RSS.
Multiple ways to connect with Live from a Lounge!
I realised it has been a while since I informed you about what is going on and how are things at the back end of the blog. Some of you’ve also pinged in to ask about my columns. First things first, there have been some excessive downtimes with BoardingArea overall of late, and these have been analysed to belong mostly to Amazon Web Services, the cloud server that is a part of the problem. However, some other times it is more some lines of bad code as well, but there is assurance that BoardingArea will be moving to a better server soon, so thanks to the folks who manage BoardingArea for that. Next, how are we doing? Thank you for…
Winner: Spot the Mistake Contest!
A few days back I’d put out a small contest, asking all of you to identify various airline logo mistakes with a kiosk placed outside Mumbai CSI Airport Terminal 2. Now, I received a whole lot of replies, but here are the ones I was looking for. Most of you got 2 right, but not the third one: a) Continental Airlines merged with United, and operates under the United name now, the board still stated Continental b) Qantas no longer flies from Mumbai c) Kingfisher is there and is stated as a oneworld member. Now, this picture was clicked before Kingfisher’s license to fly was suspended, so the real catch there I was looking for was that it was a…
American Airlines announces double elite qualification miles & redeemable miles!
Just when I was getting a little anxious about how to retain my AA EXP status this year, since AA cut out the ORD-DEL flight which was a favourite, they came back with a bang. There is a reason I love AAdvantage over my home programs as well if possible. They really know how to take care of their elites very very well. So, with the new promotion, non-elites can become elites faster, and elites can earn 300% RDMs (100% EQMs+100% bonus RDMs + 100% promo EQMs). Non-elites will move to the elite promotion the day they move into the ranks, during this promotion period. And yes, non-elites will also earn double RDMs for the period Nov 16 – Nov…
Citibank PremierMiles: Etihad Guest is a partner, Indigo changes & dynamic redemptions go mainstream
While I write this, I hope you’ve all registered for the PremierMiles top 2000 spenders contest for this quarter where these guys get to double their miles. Contest is opt – in so if you don’t register, you don’t get counted. Now, first for the big news. Etihad Guest, the loyalty program of Etihad airlines, is now a partner with the PremierMiles program. I think this went online today, since last I checked a couple of days back, this partner was not there on the list. From now on, you can also transfer your PremierMiles 1:1 on Etihad Guest account as well, though Etihad charging 147K for a BOM-JFK roundtrip is not giving me a good feeling on these guys…
Jet Airways’ gourmet food festival in the air till Nov 8!
Jet Airways is trying to get back into classy mode it seems. In the past, they’ve tied up with restaurants in Hong Kong to provide dining services to their premium cabin passengers on the Hong Kong – Mumbai flights. Now, there is a new fine dining experience being rolled out from November 1 through 8 on selected Mumbai – Delhi and Delhi – Mumbai flights, being called “Restaurants in the Sky.” Jet Airways has tied up with some fantastic restaurants from the Oberoi Group (which is one of India’s leading luxury hotel chain) to present meals to their Premiere (business class) customers on specific flights in this coming week. Here are the 5-star restaurants they’ve tied up with: Ziya (The…
Kingfisher employees get their salaries and get back on the job!
I initially thought that Kingfisher was not going to get out of the latest mess they got themselves in, but looks like finally the airline owner Vijay Mallya is more than eager to get it back on track. He was initially missing in action, and got branded an absconder by the media because he just wouldn’t come back to India on the next day of the crisis brewing into a lockout and grounding of the airline. However, when they seriously promised the 7-months unpaid employees 3 months salary within a month, like most of India, I believed this to be a hogwash so that Mr. Mallya did not have to face an embarrassment at the Indian Grand Prix, the Indian…
Right now is a good time to fly Jet Airways First Class!
On award redemptions, obviously! Jet Airways F suites, fitted on their Boeing 777-300 ERs only, are consistently rated as one of the finest travel product in the air, high up there with Lufthansa, Emirates and the others. In fact, Turkish and Thai Airways, who were using 9W planes on a lease built some quality soft-product around Jet’s hard product.Have a look at the promotional picture from their website below. You can check out the website here, a trip report here, and more pictures here! Pity, when I flew them Mumbai to London a few years back, I did not save the pictures else I’d have shared some of my own pictures with you as well. But I can tell you,…
Druk Air to launch Mumbai–Paro service in March’13
DrukAir, the national carrier of Bhutan, has been planning to expand services for a while now. They initially used to have only two Airbus A319s which used to serve various international destinations including Kolkata, Delhi, Gaya in India and Bangkok in Thailand. There is now a 3rd plane as well. For those who don’t know, if you want to get into the landlocked country of Bhutan by air, DrukAir is your only choice to get there. DrukAir was due to launch twice a week Mumbai-Paro direct flight after launching a flight to Singapore in September 2012. However, they have now moved the launch of this flight to March 2013 as per their website. As per AirlineRoute.net, the new schedule is…
