One of the USPs for Etihad is to have Abu Dhabi airport as their home airport. Actually, they go hand in hand. Back in 2013, they managed to get approval for a Customs & Border Protection outpost from the USA, commonly known as preclearance. What this means is that the immigration & passport control formalities for arriving into the USA are completed at Abu Dhabi itself, and you don’t have to wait in a queue for a few hours after you arrive in the USA. I did, and it was a total buzzkill for my Abu Dhabi – JFK First Class flight experience. Ever since EY acquired a stake in Jet Airways, they’ve been offering a second flight to the…
Spicejet changing hands, again.
SpiceJet, one of India’s oldest airlines, is going to change hands, again. Due to the recent financial troubles the airline has been through, where they were practically grounded for a day, the airline has been running a thinner operation than its planned 340 flights a day, down to 200 flights a day approximately. It turns out, SpiceJet will be sent back to its co-founder Ajay Singh, who will along with a set of investors take over the ownership of the airline from the current owners Sun Group and implement new measures to bring the bleeding airline back to shape. Ajay Singh sold out from the airline in 2010. There is no sign of the amount of the transaction, so we…
Jet Airways to offer 24-hours cancellation/amendment window online
I really love it when there is real competition in the skies, and players are all trying to win the battle. Ever since the announcement last year that Jet Airways is back to being a full service carrier, I’ve seen shades of them upping the game. They have added a lot of new online functionality, and are in the process of working even more on the website. Book your meal for international flights as a premium cabin flyer View your upcoming trips online One new feature/benefit that has been provided this morning is the ability to cancel/amend bookings online, within 24 hours of making a reservation. Several times, you may make a travel plan but things fall apart or you…
Jet Airways now offering sale fares till January 18, 2015
Day before yesterday, Air India kicked off fare wars 2015 edition with a sale. Last night, Jet Airways joined them in the pursuit to bring low fares to India. As per this sale, you are going to be able to book tickets across India domestic sectors by January 18, 2015 for travel till April 15, 2015. The fare class to look out for is ‘B’, and you’ll need to be careful that this sale is valid only for direct flights, which means a hopping flight is fine, but connections are not if you want to benefit from the fare sale. Also, unlike Air India, Jet Airways is offering these tickets in the non-refundable fare bracket, but you will be able…
Google Flights launched for India
Hunting down a fare just became cheaper. Google Flights, which is a visual interface offered by Google to meta-search for flights, is now available in India at www.google.co.in/flights. The beauty of this interface is that you will be able to now search for flights by date, date ranges, calendar, location and even your budget for a random trip. Dates: Google Flights offers a calendar feature, where you can see one-way or round trip pricing for various sectors across days in one go. Take for instance this round-trip pricing on BOM-DEL for end of January. You can click on the graph, and customise by duration. You will get options to see various flights by fare and by time as well. Clicking…
Review: UK 943, Delhi-Mumbai, Vistara, Economy (Guest Post)
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.
Air India kicks off 2015 with sale on India fares
I just read the news a while back, where Air India was stated to have made a profit after a long time. And then, they declared a sale to celebrate the event it seems! Air India has on offer a Spring Sale, where they are offering full-service flights around India on narrowbody planes, and widebodies too, for incredibly low prices, starting INR 1,557 onwards. You are going to be able to book tickets all the way till 18 January 2015, and valid for travel from 16 January 2015 to April 30 2015. The tickets are valid for fare class E, so do look out for the E fare class on the flights. Some of the deals are pretty sweet, like…
PremierMiles Transfer: British Airways Avios
PremierMiles Devaluation w.e.f. February 1, 2015 PremierMiles to Etihad Guest conversion PremierMiles to Air India Flying Returns conversion PremierMiles to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer conversion I slacked up a bit on the PremierMiles conversion series due to Vistara’s launch last week, and an otherwise busy calendar. But let’s get cracking once again. One of the most interesting and useful points in the oneworld alliance are those of British Airways. A few years ago, they started calling them Avios, and this is the mileage currency used by British Airways as well as Iberia at the moment. Avios transfers frequently offer bonuses to credit card partners, at least once a year, but we haven’t seen any for 2015 at this point of time…
Back at the Lounge: January 11, 2015
The last 10 days have been interesting in the points & miles & travel space. Here is a review of all that was covered at LiveFromALounge in the past 10 days. I hope you haven’t missed anything! Vistara: I travelled on the Inaugural Vistara flight UK890 on January 9, 2015. Here is my review of the Vistara Experience. Vistara dropped prices a couple of days before taking flight. I wonder why. Airline Alliances: Check out my piece for the Conde Nast Traveller India, where I discuss the options for Indian travellers while choosing their airline affinities. Miles & Points: Citibank PremierMiles is changing the transfer options from 1:1 for PM -> Airmile transfer, to 2PM:1AirMile with effect from February 1,…
Review: UK 890 Delhi–Mumbai, Vistara, Economy
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…
New Year Resolution: Choose the right airline alliance
India is just about getting started with the airline alliances. But in the last year itself, it saw two of them. Air India joined the Star Alliance and Jet Airways joined Etihad Airways Partners, by virtue of having an investment from them. Conde Nast Traveller commissioned me to write a comparison about the various airline alliances in existence, and how can an Indian traveller navigate through them. I did a brief snapshot, which was published in the magazine and has now been reproduced online as well. You can read it here. I hope this is of use to all of you. If you have questions, happy to answer here or on email. Join over 4000 people who check-in daily to…
