Malaysia Airlines, which is a member elect of the oneworld alliance, will be inducted as a full-member of the alliance with effect from February 1, 2013. The airline was invited to be a part of the alliance in June 2011, with Qantas being their sponsor into the alliance. As per a news release on the oneworld website, Malaysia Airlines will become a full member of oneworld® with effect from Friday 1 February 2013, adding one of commercial aviation’s most frequent award winners to the world’s leading quality airline alliance. The national airline of Malaysia received clearance to board oneworld after successfully completing a thorough review of its readiness conducted by Qantas, which is sponsoring its entry into the alliance, with…
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Crazy Airplane Pic: an Airbus 350 dressed like an Airbus 380
I haven’t had so much laughter in days like when I was getting done with breakfast at one of Mumbai’s oldest establishments. I walked out and happened to pass by a travel agency’s office, and found something terribly wrong with this picture. Any guesses what is wrong? Would you book tickets with a TA who does not know the plane he booked you on? Fancy your chances of an upgrade here? Have a good day folks. Live From A Lounge is present on Facebook, Twitter & available via email, RSS.
Did your Turkish Miles & Smiles a/c get cancelled without notice?
Turkish Airline’s Miles & Smiles program has been becoming a favourite for those targeting Star Alliance status matches to Gold, or getting a quicker qualification to *A Gold due to less miles need to be earned. Like I mentioned here last week, my kid brother was out on a worktrip, and was going to net about ~18,000 *A miles for his flying. I thought it was a good opportunity to get half way on to requalifying for the TK Gold status he already had. He needed to do about 37,500 miles in 24 months, and this was easy. (To put all the talk about crediting to Aegean instead, the fare classes don’t earn any miles on that program) Since I…
Your Bonus PremierMiles have been posted!
I’ve said more than enough about my love for the Citibank PremierMiles credit card. You can read the review here. Back in May I had posted about a lovely promotion these bankers came up with to promote their credit card product. Since they already offered 10 PremierMiles per Rs. 100 on air travel, they added a 4-month long promotion, where international travel and any kind of hotel stays would have got you the same rewards as well. All the things that matter to a traveller, no? All the bonus miles were going to come in one big lot, which was supposed to be in November. However, what can only speak for itself, they outdid their own commitment and all members…
LinkedIn referrals back: Get the Platinum Reserve Amex for 20% discount
American Express in India is clearly getting some good word of mouth and business via LinkedIn. Like I posted a few months back, American Express had tied-up with LinkedIn, where existing members can refer new members for a potential American Express card. For the period October to December 2012, that campaign has been renewed. If you have a LinkedIn account, you can refer your contacts there to get a new American Express Credit or Charge Card. There are some wonderful offers out there, and the Platinum Reserve card available via this promotion is something I’ve begin to like. American Express Platinum Reserve is the 2nd best card in the American Express hierarchy in India, and is a credit card. It…
Who is responsible for all the free Alitalia tickets getting cancelled?
If you booked free tickets around Europe on Alitalia last week, using their Japanese website and then had your tickets cancelled, you got to watch this video to find out who is responsible. At least this time it wasn’t the bloggers who blew it up 😉 Live From A Lounge is present on Facebook, Twitter & available via email, RSS.
I still don’t have a winning entry for this contest!
On Monday, I put out this little contest for all the aviation geeks out there. Looks like it was missed by most of you due to the BoardingArea downtime that happened the same day. The last date to submit your entries is today EOD. I am still looking for the 3 mistakes I originally asked for, and I don’t have a winner yet! So, take part here, and you might just be the winner of the American Express Gift Card from me. Related Posts: Spot the mistakes [and win a prize!] Live From A Lounge is present on Facebook, Twitter & available via email, RSS.
Flying from BOM/DEL to get cheaper January 2013 onwards!
You remember that everytime you travel from Mumbai or Delhi airports, you pay a Development Fee, which is going directly to construction or development of future facilities but will not gain you comfort today? Mumbai airport levies Rs. 100 and Rs. 600 on each domestic and international passenger as Airport Development Fee. Delhi charges Rs. 200 and Rs. 1,300 as ADF from every domestic and international outbound flyer along with a user development fee (UDF) of Rs 196 to Rs 1,068 from all flyers, including incoming ones. The combined impact of these two fees has made Delhi among the most expensive airports in the world, leading to airlines dropping the swanky airport from their plans over the past year. The…
Amex offering 20% bonus on MR conversion to Etihad Guest Miles
A short while back I wrote about the excellent 30% bonus that American Express was offering for conversions from India-based cards’ Membership Rewards to Avios, which can be used on British Airways and Iberia. I also spotted today on the American Express Membership Rewards portal, that there is a promotion on for Etihad Guest Miles conversion as well. Etihad Guest Miles transfer at 1.6 MR = 1 Etihad Guest Mile. While I have not figured a good hidden gem in the Etihad Guest Miles program yet (they charge about 42K miles for a one-way ticket to London in Economy), if you need some more EY miles to top-up your existing balances, this is a good time to take benefit of…
Where is the Rs. 28,000 Mumbai–London R.T. fare on Jet Airways?
Someone please help me figure this out for the interest of all the readers. I woke up this morning to a report in the press stating that Jet Airways has dropped prices for Mumbai – London to Rs. 9,990 (without taxes) one way in the busy season of October-November. This is to counter the re-launch of Virgin Atlantic in the Mumbai – London sector from October 28. The news report says: Jet Airways, the country’s pre-eminent private carrier, has slashed fares on the Mumbai-London sector to less than 10,000 per person (excluding taxes), reviving memories of a price war that made fares on the South-east Asian routes from India one of the cheapest in the world. The Naresh Goyal-promoted airline…
Is GoIbibo.com really that good as its TVC’s claim to be?
GoIbibo.com is an online travel website, one of the many in India. To set themselves out of the crowd, this year they released with an aggressive TV campaign which took on the offline travel agents community bigtime, showing them in poor light. Here is one of the TVC, in Hindi, where they show that offline OTAs take a lot of dilly-dallying to process ticket refunds and how they are better. I don’t use their website frequently, but when they offered a competitive price on a Kingfisher Airlines ticket a while back, which was a lower fare class than even Kingfisher’s own website, it was only logical to book with them. I know I was taking a risk by booking Kingfisher,…
