Jet Airways is offering a special fare on the Mumbai – Bangkok – Mumbai segment for those willing to book up 21 days in advance. Have a look at the all inclusive fare, which starts from INR 14K and goes upto INR 16K for booking 21 days to 7 days ahead. Considering Bangkok is a vacation destination for most, this should be doable, no? In the past, Jet Airways used to outprice Thai Airways and Cathay Pacific on this route, in spite of the fact that their capacity was lesser (they fly a Boeing 737 compared to the A330/B777 configurations of Thai and Cathay). It seems they’ve now expressed intention to be in the game rather than out of the…
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Investments in Indian airlines are a go, Kingfisher might be saved!
Coming, not coming, coming, not! Finally, airlines in India are going to get the lifeline they were hoping for a long time. The Government of India finally took the measure to allow Indian scheduled carriers (Air India, Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines, GoAir, Indigo, SpiceJet) to seek foreign equity infusion upto 49% of their equity capital from foreign airlines. Here is what the presser from the Government of India says: The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has approved the proposal of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion for permitting foreign airlines to make foreign investment, up to 49 percent in scheduled and non-scheduled air transport services. Removing the existing restriction on investment by foreign airlines would assist in bringing in…
Air India’s 787 first revenue flight on DEL-MAA 19 Sept ’12!
Air India, the confused Indian carrier, is up to it. They took a long while deciding when to offer the 787 flights to the public, and as per a FlyerTalk thread, this is also due to the infighting between the old Air India management and the Indian Airlines crew (which was on paper merged into AI in 2005). That said, they have finally loaded the first flights of their recently acquired Boeing 787 into their reservation systems, and the first revenue flight of the bird will be on 19th September 2012 on DEL – MAA (AI 639). Here is the extract from AirlineRoutes.net which confirmed this: Delhi – Chennai eff 19SEP12 AI439/440AI439 DEL0700 – 0940MAA 788 DAI430 MAA1045 – 1325DEL…
And the Spicejet Rs. 1,000 gift coupon winner is…
Like you know a couple of days back I put out a contest for my Indian readers to be able to win a 1,000 Rs. gift coupon on Spicejet. It was simple, you could just go and sign up for the mailing list here, and win a voucher in the process. Quite a few new people signed up, and the winner of the voucher is: Sriram Hariiyer Congrats Sriram, and your voucher will be in the mail shortly! For those who did not win, more on its way shortly! Happy flying! Live From A Lounge is present on Facebook, Twitter & available via email, RSS.
Buying from amexgifts.in was a bad idea!!
So like you guys know me, I keep pushing you to put all your spend on plastic money and earn miles and/or points for everything you do. However, there is another kind of plastic money I’ve never used in India which is prepaid cards. Why do I need them when I already have Visa/MasterCard/American Express lined up in my pocket, right? Sometime back, you’d remember I hopped over to Goa for a friend’s wedding and assorted events. Now, the gifting was due, and we for the love of our life, could not figure out what to gift since there was no public gift registry. Then, we went around the options of giving away gift vouchers, from the spa to many…
Win a Rs. 1,000 Spicejet gift coupon!
Spicejet sent me along a gift coupon a few days back, and I’d like to share it with one of the readers of the blog. Valid for bookings and travel till 30th September 2012, the voucher allows for a Rs. 1,000 discount on your booking on SpiceJet. It is very simple to try and get your hands on this one. All you have to do is sign up for the mailing list here, and activate your subscription so that we can send you all the news and deals about Indian aviation, travel and promotions, once a day. Giveaway is open for subscribers till 13th September 2012 23:59 India Standard Time, and for Indian residents only. One lucky winner gets the…
Lufthansa now offers in-flight wifi on flights from Chennai & Mumbai
The mailbox had a sweet piece of news this afternoon from Lufthansa. Lufthansa clearly looks at India as a valuable market, as has been signified by their introduction of the Boeing 747-8i in India at an early stage, their investment in a lounge in Delhi and the upgrade of the business class in flights from Mumbai. Today, I spotted an interesting piece of news tucked away in a corner of a mailer from LH. FlyNet is the Lufthansa wifi internet offering, and LH has been trying to get as many planes equipped with on-board wifi as fast as possible. LH flies the Boeing 747-400 with the new First Class on-board from Mumbai to Frankfurt, the Airbus 330-300 with new Business…
Why I am not too hopeful with the Air India 787 induction?!
The Air India B787 take off from Charleston I’ve been sounding negative all along about Air India being actually able to make some difference with the cutting edge 787 being added to their fleet. After a comedy of errors all these months, as the plane took off from Charlseton yesterday to be flown to Delhi, I know a lot of India is feeling like this plane is going to change the fortunes of Air India. I can’t support that view, because I’ve seen Air India go down and down over the months and years from the sidelines. Here are some things that point to them being clueless about the whole airline business maybe. Perhaps one of India’s respectable aviation journalist,…
Mumbai airport finally has internet check-in!
Almost all airlines offer web check-in for travel, domestic as well as international. However, security regulations in India are slightly funny, which means when travelling domestic, you need to get the boarding pass validated by an airline official who cross checks with your ID and stamps the BP, and the proceed for security check. However, a reader Pranay brought my attention to this news article today, published in a national daily, which states that the airport operator has simplified the process: From September 1, the Mumbai airport operator has scrapped the procedure wherein passengers, who had opted for a web check-in, had to get printouts of their boarding cards stamped at the airline check-in counters. I’ll be taking a few…
The Jinx is broken. Air India has been delivered a Boeing 787-8!
Oh lord, this was not deemed to have happen, but it finally did. I first crossed roads with an Air India colors Boeing 787 at the Indian Aviation 2012 event in March 2012. For the record, I was not impressed with how Air India was planning to use these planes, because they were clueless themselves. At that point of time, Air India was supposed to be the second carrier to have the plane, and perhaps the first one with the GEnx-1B engines, picking them up in May 2012. That was the plan even when I visited the Boeing factory in January 2012 and talked to some people there. And then, Air India and the Government of India got greedy and…
Reminder: Free stay+spa giveaway at Park Hyatt Goa ends Sept 9,2012
If you haven’t noticed, I put out a free night giveaway which includes a room night (paid for, along with taxes and breakfast for 2) and a trip to the spa at the Park Hyatt Goa Resort & Spa last week. The giveaway runs through till Sunday 9th September 2012, 23:59 India Standard Time. You can enter (repeatedly!) and via two different methods. Read on: You can participate via Twitter: Follow @LiveFromALounge on Twitter. Tweet which bit of the Park Hyatt Goa Experience are you looking forward to enjoy the most. Do include @LiveFromALounge and the hashtag #HYATTGOA in the Tweet. You can tweet me once per calendar day (00:00 Hours India Standard Time to 23:59 India Standard Time). To…
