Jet Airways’ 25% off mileage rewards on international routes

Jet Airways is offering economy reward seats from upto March 31, 2013 on various routes flying into south-east Asia and the Middle-East for 25% less miles required if redeemed online on jetairways.com.

Jet Airways has an on going promotion for travel within India on JPMiles, where you get a 20% off the standard redemption mileage requirements, both in Economy and Premiere, valid till March 31, 2013.

The new offer entails redemptions in Economy class on the following routes, on Jet Airways and JetKonnect flights only:

Mumbai to: Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, Dubai, Hong Kong, Muscat and Singapore
Delhi to: Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore
Kolkata to: Bangkok
Chennai to: Singapore
Mangalore to: Dubai
Thiruvananthapuram to: Muscat
Kochi to: Muscat and Sharjah

This promotion is valid for award booking and travel between January 16 and March 31, 2013 (both days inclusive).

Now lets evaluate if this is a good promotion or bad? Jet Airways’ fuel surcharges on tickets internationally are killer, and are all passed on to the flyer. So, I looked up a couple of routes. Lets start with Mumbai – Dubai – Mumbai for a random date in March 2013 (so that low fares are still available), and turned up with Rs. 20,000 roundtrip fare.

Here is the reward search, same route same date:

Now, like you can see, you are due to pay 22,500 JPMiles + Rs. 16000 for a mileage redemption. This makes really bad value for your JPMiles, even with the 25% discount factored in, because you are only saving 20% on the cash component and giving away a lot of miles in the process.

Lets try another route, BOM-HKG-BOM which is a widebody route, and costs you 30,000 JP Miles + Rs. 16,500 in Y, as compared to Rs. 22,500 for cash (and you earn 100% miles too!).