India

Category Archives for India.

Jet Airways Citibank Credit Cards devalue upgrade benefits from September 2011

The Jet Airways Citibank co-branded Platinum Card was one of the more popular and advantageous airline credit cards in India. It looks like it had enough of the high table so it decided to jump off right away. I first heard of the devaluation on this flyertalk thread. I have been holding this card for quite a few years, and was in fact the only credit card I used for a very long time and pay a fee for. When I read this new scheme of things, I could not believe my eyes, and since I am travelling I haven’t received my letter from Citi yet. I checked up on Citibank’s India website, and it confirmed the horror story to…

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Jet Airways pilots flying ‘high’!

This piece of news kind of got me scared a bit, but it is definitely not keeping me away from flying. A recent piece of information tabled in the Indian Parliament reported that there were 67 pilots who were found positive in the pre-flight medical test over the years 2009 to 2011, and one third of them were from Jet Airways. Kingfisher followed next along with Indigo. Make your own interpretations, but for me, this did not change anything except for wondering if Kingfisher Airlines was not providing enough brew to it’s crew, considering it is a sister concern of India’s biggest spirits and beer maker! On a serious note, it also meant that Air India, despite all the wrong…

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Things are changing at Indian airlines….

I happened to remember this one series of hoardings I had spotted a while back while travelling in the country. I thought it would be interesting to share, and managed to find this on an aviation humor website.    Looking back, can someone tell me who changed and who did not, eventually? I think 9W/Jet Airways turned out to be the eventual winner. While the flying models of Kingfisher are doing their job at a bleeding airline where service standards are going down and Go Air has no clear direction to go in!

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Heads roll at Air India

When Air India got kicked out of the Star Alliance even before it joined, I had a feeling that someone would be fired to fix the blame. And lo and behold, it did not take long for the Government of India to take a decision that it was the Chairman and Managing Director of the airline, Arvind Jadhav, a career bureaucrat who was not able to turn around the airline. So, this morning, it got into the news that he was removed from his post. Air India was a profitable operation until 2005 when it got merged with Indian Airlines. Earlier, AI used to take care of the international market, while IC was the domestic carrier. The rationale for merger…

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The journey is the reward…

I’ve used this adage for the longest time, and yet I did not know that like many things Chinese that exist, this is a Chinese proverb. So thank you China for giving me one more thing apart from the iPhone that really makes my life really interesting. As a financial engineer, I work with clients and colleagues across the world and this still does necessitate travel and face to face meetings in the age of conference calls and video conferences.  This was my initiation into the world of airplanes and hotels quite a few years back. This was also my initiation to Mumbai, which is the commerce capital of India an upcoming financial supercentre much like London, New York and…

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