Jet Airways clearly has a great tool in its fight against all the incoming new carriers, and it is called JetPrivilege. So yesterday, when Vistara announced the launch of their operations on the Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Ahmedabad and Mumbai-Ahmedabad sectors as of January 9, 2015, Jet Airways hit back with some nice goodies to tell them who is the boss! Yes, Jet Airways flights on all these segments will earn double bonus miles in economy on all the sectors listed above, and triple in business class. These miles are apart from the tier and cabin bonuses for both these airlines. All flights booked before the promotion launch date also qualify. Join over 4000 people who check-in daily to find out about the…
Club Vistara: India’s first revenue Frequent Flyer Program offers 500 points for signup
This is known by now, that Vistara is taking wings as of January 9, 2015 with a special Delhi-Mumbai flight. I also posted a while back about the inflight experience a bit. Now, lets come to Club Vistara, the frequent flyer program for the airline, which will be India’s first revenue-based frequent flyer program. Out here, we already guessed the name right a few months ago. The program will have 3 tiers: Club Silver Gold My guess, looking at the loyalty program’s dashboard is, that you need to earn 25,000 status points to get to Silver, and another 25,000 Status Points to be able to make it to Gold Tier. The benefits, are unknown and the website does not talk…
Vistara’s seat details and in-flight dining revealed
While we did not have any information about Vistara till last night, the details have now started to roll in. For those of you who have not read this post about the initial details, do that now. Now, while there are no pictures of the seats, the description gives away enough: Business Class: 42 inches seat pitch and 7 inches seat recline extendable leg rest, foot rest, and height-adjustable headrest with wings soft and cuddly cushion on every seat to provide additional back support personal storage space at the side of the seat, for small items such as glasses, a tablet, etc. Premium Economy: 33 to 36 inches seat pitch 4.5 inches seat recline (except for the row with 36…
All you need to know about Vistara (taking flight on January 9, 2015)
Vistara is all set to take to the skies. They received their Air Operator Permit earlier this week, and will be launching their first flight on the Delhi-Mumbai-Ahmedabad routes on January 9, 2015. Like I already mentioned before, the tailsign for Vistara will be UK. From whatever I have been able to gather at the moment, the inaugural flight will be UK-890 on BOM-DEL on January 9, 2015 at 12:30 PM from Delhi, arriving into Mumbai at 14:45 PM. Vistara will start operating with 2 planes (airbus A320-200s). Here is a primitive schedule for the first few days I could cobble together via the various OTAs: 09 January 2014 UK890 DEL1230 BOM1445 A320 UK895 BOM1655 DEL1905 A320 UK228 DEL1730 BOM1940…
Spicejet flights grounded, to take off at 4 pm IST today
Spicejet, which has been facing an existence crisis, has been not exactly in the pink of health recently. They’ve started cancelling flights while returning planes, and then were asked to close in bookings to one month only by the Government of India. Just earlier this week they were knocking on the doors of Government of India to speak to them, and the government offered them the following way forward: Spicejet can now take bookings till March 31, 2015 Airports Authority of India would wait another fortnight for their payments Oil marketing companies who supply fuel to SG were asked to provide fuel on credit till December 31, 2014. They can raise short term loans of upto INR 600 Crores backed…
JetPrivilege extending validity of miles for co-branded card holders
I just received a wonderful surprise from JetPrivilege in my email, something that maybe a lot of you would be receiving shortly or have already received as well. JetPrivilege just sent out an email stating that the validity of all my JetPrivilege miles was being extended from 3 years to 5 years. I wasn’t ever worried about their expiry due to my JetPrivilege Platinum status, but seems like I have more time now even in case I don’t have Platinum status anymore. The email states that you need to hold at least one active co-branded credit card to get yourself the 2 year extension of your mileage balance expiry. This means not just holding the card but having made at…
IHG’s “Set Your Sights” promotion for Jan-Apr 2015 live
IHG is really the first one off the bat with their 2015 promotion, which is very similar to their customised promotions these days such as the Big Win. I gave a miss to their 2014 “Into the Nights” promotion as I focussed on getting my Hyatt Diamond status lined up for 2015. In hindsight, maybe it was good because IHG had problems executing the program at least in the period September – December 2014 with the Into the Nights promotion. Now, the next customized promotion is live for the first trimester of 2015, and it is called Set your Sights, and it is already live for registration. This time as well, everyone gets a promotion which is customized as per…
JetPrivilege now offers Business Rewards and corporate co-branded card with Amex
JetPrivilege is on a roll with launching new features this year. First, they introduced the new minimum accrual for Jet Airways flights at 500 miles minimum. Then they added to it the new redemption chart where there were some improvements and some devaluations. Then, they launched Family pooling of JetPrivilege miles, along with the ability to earn miles for kids. Now, the new one. Just last week they’ve launched the ability for businesses to earn JPMiles. To be able to earn JPMiles for Businesses, the only way it is possible, is to sign up for the newly launched Jet Airways corporate co-branded card with American Express. By signing up for the card, you get a company-level account to accumulate JetPrivilege…
Reflecting on Hyatt award chart changes and India impact
Frequent Traveller Ajay Awtaney comments on the recent move of Hyatt to change their award categories
Transit UK airports without a visa now
Back in October I had written about the new policy change with the UK government, which would allow for Indians to transit the UK without the need for a Direct Airside Transit Visa or a regular Visa, as long as they had a visa for the USA or Canada. Now, I wasn’t sure about this myself because this did not update on the UK Government’s website as quickly as I hoped it would. Heathrow is one of the busiest airports around the world, but clearly they were not a favourite for many Indians because of the high costs to even transit the airport. Apart from the other issues that go with it, such as an Air Passenger Duty which is…
Should Hyatt Regency Delhi make promotions they can’t keep?
Just this morning I wrote about a promotion the Hyatt has gone to town about, as a part of the Great Online Shopping Festival. It is a straightforward promotion, which asks to apply a coupon code, and you get 50% off rack rate. When I realised about this promotion yesterday, I started to look up rooms at the Hyatt Regency Delhi, for the benefit of some folks who really really wanted to stay about there. But, I run into this wall… I reached out to Hyatt Concierge on Twitter, who initially told me the hotel would contact me, but 22 hours later had not. When I reached out to them again, the hotel was only having blackout dates for those…
