Mumbai Airport Lounge Access: An all inclusive resource for various available airport lounges at Mumbai’s CSI airport (Terminal 1 & 2) and how to get access.
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Hyatt Regency Ahmedabad offering 3000 Hyatt Gold Passport Points bonus
The Hyatt chain has recently added a new property in India, this time, a Hyatt Regency in Ahmedabad. To celebrate the launch of the new property, the hotel is offering an opening offer, which provides you 3,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points during your stay, if you complete your stay till June 30, 2015.
Oberoi launches Advantage 2015: 1 night for 5 nights across India/UAE
The Oberoi chain of luxury hotels and resorts does not have a loyalty program per se, but they do make promotions which look like one from time to time. The same promotion is essentially rehashed. However, this time they’ve upgrade the promotion to add free nights in a suite to the mix. For 5 nights that you stay at various Oberoi Hotels in India/UAE between the period April 15, 2015 to September 30, 2015, you get one free night at any Oberoi Hotel in India, Indonesia, Dubai, Mauritius and Egypt. Complimentary night stay includes accommodation in a standard double room and is inclusive of taxes. If you are a high-roller and spend 5 nights in a suite, you get…
IHG Rewards Club to introduce new Black/Diamond tier & expire points
They all come to terms with the new realities, someday. The IHG Rewards Club program, which is the loyalty program encompassing InterContinental, Even, Indigo, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge & CandleBridge brand of hotels, just announced some new changes today. Points Expiration One of the selling points for Intercontinental Hotels Group has been that their points don’t expire under the IHG Rewards Club. However, this is changing with effect from April 14, 2015. If you are a base level member (Club member in their parlance), with no activity in 12 months, you could lose all your points. You need to earn or redeem once every 12 months to keep your points alive. This is effective immediately.…
You can now pre-book all kind of seats on Indian domestic flights (for a price!)
When Indian aviation was introduced to the concept of unbundling, some of the airlines went berserk and wanted to charge for pre-blocking on any and every seat. The government caged them down to offering at best 25% of the seats on a plane, and middle seats could not be charged for pre-blocking, at all. Anyhow, under a new regulation that came into effect just a few days back, it turns out DGCA has allowed airlines to charge for all seats on the plane. The earlier regulation read as follows: Seat offered on opt-in charge basis shall not exceed 25% of the total seat configuration of the aircraft. Middle seats shall not be offered for preferential seating except for the seats…
The Novice Perspective: What is your motivation to travel?
Shipra is my fiancée and the first of contributors at the blog. She has worked with one of the largest airline conglomerates in the world, and is now based in Mumbai. Shipra has lived, worked and travelled across 4 continents. We travel often enough, together and separately. These are her perspectives, as she gets used to the world of business and leisure travel and our hobby! The Novice Perspective: Initiating my Fiancée to Points & Miles The Novice Perspective: Getting used to Airport Lounges The Novice Perspective: Benefiting from hotel loyalty programs The Novice Perspective: Maximising hotel promotions is a fun game! The Novice Perspective: Choosing credit cards to fuel the travel passion The Novice Perspective: Airline loyalty pays off…
Vistara 10% cashback with Citibank Credit Cards this weekend
Citibank and Vistara are running a joint promotion this weekend, where bookings made with a Citibank Credit Card on www.airvistara.com, will get you a 10% cashback for up to INR 2000 per booking. The promotion is valid for bookings made between April 10, 2015 to April 12, 2015. Vistara is a good full-service airline, and I flew on their inaugural flight. I’d fly them again if it fits my schedules. The details on the promotion are present on the Citibank website, and are listed as under: Offer details: 10% cash back at www.airvistara.com. 10% cash back capped to Rs.2000 per transaction. Maximum four (4) transactions allowed per credit card. Cash back to be credited by/before 31st May 2015 in customer’s…
India gets back its Category 1 safety rating by FAA
Like I’d written on this blog about 14 months back, India had received a downgrade of its safety assessment rating from the American civil aviation authority FAA, which conducts an inspection on the regulators of all the countries who operate flights to the USA. The downgrade was done on the premise that India’s regulator did not have the expertise to supervise India’s airlines, and needed to beef up their know how to be able to get back to Category 1. The impact of this downgrade, a privilege that only few other countries had, was that India’s airlines could not launch new flights to the USA, and the ones which they already had, would face additional scrutiny. Also, no American airlines…
Air Pegasus to start flights on April 12, 2015
Air Pegasus is the newest regional airline coming up in India, and they will be based in Bangalore. They got their license to fly last year, however have taken a long time to get up and running. Air Pegasus will operate only in the South Indian region. The airline will only operate an ATR-72 plane fleet, and initially, they intend to connect between Bangalore, Hubli and Trivandrum. They are selling tickets for the initial bunch of flights at a promotional price of INR 1234 on their website www.airpegasus.in. Any of my readers planning to be on their flights soon? Looking forward to hearing the reviews. Join over 4500 people who check-in daily to find out about the best in travel.Free…
Why Jet Airways bashing may always not be right all the time!
Let me admit, I am slightly biased towards Jet Airways, but I do give them a piece of my mind on Twitter when they don’t operate planes with clean aisles, or chicken meals without the chicken and so on. They send back a polite email, no promise, no action, but we leave it at that. Anyhow, this is about a blogpost that has recently gone viral, blaming Jet Airways for all their trouble. A couple of readers pointed me in this direction, so I thought it would be good to give some perspective on how airlines work, and why a lot of this looks over the top exaggeration. First, the original post is here, but it relates to a recent…
Tonnes of changes coming to Air India Flying Returns
One of the best and worst frequent flyer programs in India at the same time is Air India’s Flying Returns. Why bad? Because it is a pretty miserly program I would say again and again. Why good? Because they’ve got a credit card on the market which makes it easy to earn their miles and status, and they are a member of Star Alliance, so their status comes handy across the globe. Having said that, I received a new membership kit yesterday, which had a Golden Edge membership card valid till April 2015 (my status matched membership expired in March 2015 actually). As per the postmarks, the kit was dispatched in April 2015, and I am already an Air India…
