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.
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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,…
Do you still have a Kingfisher reservation?
Kingfisher might be gone, but there are people who have Kingfisher Airlines reservations out there. I had one for a couple of weeks back, and it took me a while to get it refunded because Kingfisher won’t pick the phone and the online travel agent I booked the ticket with was not going to make a ‘full refund’ till the airline did not update the ticket with instructions. Kingfisher, being in the dire straits it is, will not offer to put you on another airline if you booked their rock bottom fares and now don’t have a flight. So, you are best up booking on your own on another carrier. How to get your refund? Kingfisher was being proactive this…
Did you get your Star Alliance Gold Status with Turkish yet?
In May this year, I had posted about the Turkish Airlines status match offer, where I had written that the top tier members from all three alliances (Star Alliance, oneworld as well SkyTeam). Yes, you read it right, TK is the only airline to status match into Star Alliance Gold tier as well. All you have to do, is send an email to customermiles@thy.com with a scan of your other airline FFP membership card and account statement (this is a requirement to receive both). Turkish is still matching, which means easy status The status match is valid for 2 years from the date of upgrade, and to renew, all you need to do is bank 25K status miles (on any…
Is the Jet Airways Amex on its way in soon?
Jet Airways ran the “Wheel of Fortune” contest in June, where it asked for your guesses on which were the banks it was going to partner with. The prize for the correct answer was going to be a complimentary first year membership to the bank’s card you picked (it was correct), and later on, modified to become 1,000 JP Miles. Now, in July 9W announced that it had formed a partnership with three banks: HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and American Express. And while there was a lot of push and shove on how Jet Airways was going to honor the complimentary first year membership, they figured that along the way. The 1,000 JP Miles for HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank…
So Long, Kingfisher!
I’ve got reader mail in the past few days about what was going to eventually happen to Kingfisher Airlines. I have to admit I’ve been very busy offline to respond, but like I wrote in my last post about this airline, their license was at stake a few days back. And now, it is finally over. Yesterday, the Indian aviation regulator DGCA, which had given Kingfisher Airlines 15 days to respond, finally went ahead and suspended the airlines’ aviation license. On October 5, Kingfisher Airlines received a notice from the regulator, with a 15-day timeline to respond. On October 19, Kingfisher responded back, asking for more time to respond to the notice. They had tried to convince the employees a…
Spot the mistakes [and win a prize!]
Last week sometime I was at the Mumbai Airport, and I happened to notice the e-ticket printing machines installed there. Like you know, to access an Indian airport, you need a printed itinerary (not an electronic one, but a paper copy!). Now, here is a picture of all the options presented at the machine: Now, there are at least 3 mistakes on this board, there could be more! And remember, this picture was taken before Kingfisher was officially grounded by the DGCA! Contest time! Here is the contest, in the comments section, you have to tell me what 3 mistakes are on the board, and your country of residence. One of the entries, which has all the three correct answers,…
American Express offering 30% bonus on transfer to Avios (British Airways!)
I was just waiting for this to happen in India. American Express has been offering a transfer bonus on British Airways currency Avios for a while now, and different time periods for different countries. I was hoping India was on the map as well, and I just heard that was indeed the case. For a limited time, till November 30, American Express is offering members who have Amex cards issued in India a 30% bonus on transferring their Membership Reward points to Avios (the mileage currency used for British Airways and Iberia). Usually, 1.6 MR transfer into 1 Avios, but in this case, the redemption level looks better, and you can convert MR into Avios at 1.23 MR = 1…
