Global

Category Archives for Global.

JetPrivilege offering 20% bonus to convert Card & Hotel points to miles

c JetPrivilege, Jet Airways’ frequent flyer program, runs a campaign to offer you a bonus for all your points (credit card points etc.) to be converted into miles. In 2013, they offered a 20% bonus on converting hotel points to miles, apart from a credit card conversion bonus of a similar amount. They’d have run higher promotions in the past, and in 2012 it used to be 25% bonuses. The promotion is back, albeit for a limited time, for 2015, and this time around, JetPrivilege is offering 20% extra miles for your conversion of points to JP miles. The conversion bonuses run between March 2, 2015 to March 31, 2015. Which means any request that gets completed within this time…

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Review: JW Marriott Mussoorie Walnut Grove Resort & Spa

We spend a leisurely weekend in the hills at the JW Marriott Resort & Spa in Mussoorie. This is a beautiful resort that has two great things about them; First, they managed to build a great team with a majority of staff being local. Second, their focus on the local economy. Local cooks were hired on a part time basis to bring local flavors to the cuisine.

This is a hotel I’d love coming back to, more than once. And I hope they keep their standar

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When Air India did its job and got flak for it!

There is a video making the rounds these days, where Air India employees are putting up with passengers who arrived late and the flight was closed. This is a video which was shot at Mumbai’s Terminal 2 a few days ago, with a camera smartphone and uploaded to a social network for maximum impact. Apparently, a bunch of passengers arrived at Terminal 2, Mumbai, 55 minutes before the flight. For Air India, they operate a few flights from Terminal 2 at this moment, but these are domestic legs of international flights. For instance, very clearly mentioned on their website, is this information: Assuming the passengers arrived at Terminal 2 and not Terminal 1A, which is at least 20 minutes away…

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Review: UK 943, Delhi-Mumbai, Vistara, Economy (Guest Post)

a seat on an airplane

Ever since I wrote about my inaugural flight experience on Vistara, one of the question asked the most was, is this the usual everyday experience? So, I requested permission from a friend and reader Vishal Mehra, to be able to reproduce his experience of flying Vistara Economy from Delhi to Mumbai here.

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Review: UK 890 Delhi–Mumbai, Vistara, Economy

a white airplane flying in the sky

Vistara, the new full-service Indian carrier that is a joint venture between Tata Group of India and Singapore Airlines, took to the skies yesterday. I have been looking forward to this for a very long time, since Vistara has promised to keep differentiated service as a cornerstone of their strategy. Like I said when Vistara made an initial product reveal, Vistara is hoping to be the Louis Vuitton of Indian Aviation. At the event, I wondered if they really were doing justice to their product with the reveal, because everything they said looked like just words then. Curious to find out if Vistara was all that it promised to be, I had to be on one of their planes. The…

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Flight Review: AI 687 Mumbai-Delhi, Air India, Business Class (B777)

a plane taking off from the ground

A couple of days back, I was supposed to take a Mumbai – Delhi flight, to come back to family for the holidays. Since I kind of like wide body planes and the new GVK Lounge at Terminal 2, I booked myself on AI 101 which does BOM-DEL-JFK, but is a late night flight arriving into Delhi about midnight. However, last minute, I realised Air India was also operating a BOM-DEL flight in the afternoon on their 777s. I guess this is a plan for them to be able to clear the winter rush, as well as accommodate all the people who may get displaced from other flights due to fog. So, I looked at the price, and it was…

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Lounge Review: Air India Lounge, Mumbai Terminal 1A

a room with white couches and a glass table

Just yesterday, I flew over to Delhi from Mumbai, yet again. I was originally scheduled to get into Delhi on AI101, which is perhaps one of my favourite flights given it gives me access to the Terminal 2 GVK Lounge, and I get to fly a Boeing 777-300ER between the 2 hour Mumbai Delhi segment (the flight further heads to New York from Delhi). However, given that it is winters and Delhi has a massive fog problem, and I did not want to really really get into home middle of the night, I decided to change my plans. I now was going to depart from terminal 1A, from where Air India operates, and this meant I had access to the…

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Review: GVK Business Class Lounge Mumbai Terminal 2

a bar with people behind it

Yesterday, I wrote about the inauguration of the new GVK Lounge at the Mumbai Airport Terminal 2, which came after months of anticipation. I had some work in Delhi today, so I was supposed to take an evening flight from Mumbai to Delhi to get here. The power of mileage tickets, I could just call Air India and swap the ticket from most of their A321 BOM-DEL flights (from Terminal 1) to get a seat on their B77W which flies BOM-DEL-JFK, and hence I could head to Terminal 2 to check out the new lounge. Air India provided me with an invite to the Business Class section of the lounge, located on Level 3, since I am a Flying Returns…

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Hotel Review: Sheraton Kuwait, A Luxury Collection Hotel

My go to hotel, while I am in Kuwait, is the Sheraton Kuwait Hotel. The Sheraton Kuwait, is a Starwood hotel, a Luxury Collection property which is somehow a splatter of almost all the Starwood brands out there. I’ll come to that in a moment. However, it is a hotel which has been very nice to me over my 5-6 stays with them over the years, in spite of the fact that I am only a SPG Gold member.

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Lounge Review: Mumbai Terminal 2 Interim Lounge

a long shot of a room

Planning the Proposal Trip to Paris One of the trip reports I’ve been holding off for a while, for the lack of adequate time to write it up. Like many of the regular readers on this blog would know, I proposed to my girlfriend in Paris this summer, and she said yes. The first thing to do was to of course, get a flight to go to Paris from Mumbai. Like I’ve mentioned before, I was going to use the Mumbai – Paris flight on Jet Airways A330-200. The context set up here was that we are going on a work trip to Europe, which was total gibberish anyways. We arrived at the Mumbai airport Terminal 2, and headed up…

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