Kingfisher Airlines may not be the darling of everyone anymore but they sure are planning to keep up the loyalty program King Club in high spirits. King Club is one of the more generous programs around, and Kingfisher Airlines allows for a lot of award space in India and decent award space outside the country on their own planes.
Back in September 2011, they had a very sweet transfer bonus of 20% for all transfers which ran through November 2011, which I advised everyone to take because the airline was in decent shape and they were on their way to join oneworld. Also, there is a decent list of airline partners where you could book your tickets with your KingClub miles.
To keep its flock of frequent fliers together and perhaps get some cash from Banks, now KFA has launched an even sweeter transfer bonus offer. Here are the details:
- Convert your loyalty points equivalent to 1,000 to 4,999 King Miles in one shot & earn 20% bonus King Miles
- Convert points equivalent to 5,000 to 9,999 King Miles in one shot and earn 25% bonus King Miles and 1 upgrade voucher
- Convert points equivalent to 10,000 King Miles in one shot (and then onwards in multiples of 10K) and earn 30% bonus King Miles + 2 upgrade vouchers + 1 One-way Kingfisher Class/Red domestic ticket (base fare) free
- Valid for transfers received in King Clubg account till March 31, 2012
While I am not too interested in the upgrade vouchers and the Kingfisher class/Red ticket, nor a Kingfisher redemption because it will just be a strain on the nerves and a ‘will it, won’t it’ moment till it happens, I am putting this out for another reason.
In case you are interested in travelling on one of the KFA partners, which there are a few of, you could still do that. They are still not a member of the oneworld alliance, but they do have a reasonable list of Kingfisher Airlines partner airlines, some of which came on board while KFA was preparing to get on board.
- American Airlines
- Air France
- Bangkok Airways
- British Airways
- Delta
- Emirates
- FinnAir
- KLM
- Qatar Airways
- s7 Airlines
Kingfisher has a distance-based redemption chart, and some of these airlines provide good award availability like American and British Airways. For 50K KingClub miles you could get an economy ticket, and 100K KingClub miles, you get a Business Class ticket one-way to the USA from India.
Redemption partners include Credit Cards such as Amex Membership Rewards, Axis Bank, Citibank India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, HSBC, IndusInd Bank and others. You could also use your SPG StarPoints and your HHonors points transferred for the same bonus applicable. Take a peek at the complete list of partners here. The transfer offer is not valid on cobranded cards of Kingfisher with American Express and ICICI Bank.
So, if you really do have a good award ticket you’d like to book up and you know it is available, I’d sure advise you to take up Kingfisher on this offer and burn your points, Amex points usually transfer immediately, while some like HDFC Bank take a short while to transfer.
Otherwise, wait till the airline can decide to live or die.
Related Posts:
- Kingfisher Airlines oneworld entry put on hold
- Kingfisher Airlines set to join the oneworld alliance in February 2012
- Kingfisher Airlines prepares for oneworld, ties up with American Airlines for frequent flyer partnership
- 20% bonus on conversion to King Club Miles till November 30 2011
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Probably wise to fly it quickly as well given Kingfisher’s precarious position.
The US-India rates you cite seem unattractively high. Is there a sweet spot in their distance chart? Short, expensive tickets maybe? What about routing rules?
@Matt, I agree about the flying quick part as well. However, it is always to each his own in that case. The US India rate is about the standard rate offered from India. For instance, I flew BOM-BRU-JFK-BRU-BOM last year on Jet airways business class in business on an award redemption which set me back by 188K miles.
Routing rules, none exist. Only a distance based chart on the website and miles deducted are based total miles flown. So, BOM-JFK would cost 100K miles in biz, while BOM-DXB-JFK should theoratically also cost the same (though never booked that one!)