Hi guys. It has been a little quiet around here. Reason? I was away on a pressure cooker trip, as I like to call it, with travels to Europe and back within 72 hours from Mumbai. Today’s giveaway comes largely courtesy a longtime reader Kamakhya, who is being generous enough to give away the following codes for use: 2 Base Fare waived ticket codes for one-way travel tickets on Jet Airways 2 Round Trip discount codes on Jet Airways for INR 750 off I am pitching in with one of my own round-trip discount codes as well for a discount of INR 750 rupees. So the total tally of prizes is like this: 2 Base Fare waived ticket codes for…
Emirates to start A380 service to Mumbai in July 2014
Emirates is surely stamping their foot and thinking how it missed the opportunity to be the first to fly their A380s to India, and Singapore Airlines will get that piece of marketing from here on. Anyhow, they’ve now announced they will move in to become the second carrier in India to fly the A380s, and they will deploy the A380s to India by upgrading one of their flights from Mumbai in July 2014. Quite interestingly, this information issued by the airline is not backed by the facts yet. Just like they are trying to act as if they had similar plans like Etihad Residences, and making noises, this is noise too because SQ recently held a press event in Delhi…
Groupon offering GoAir discount vouchers
A few days ago, I wrote about the availability of British Airways discount vouchers on Groupon India. Groupon has been working with GoAir in the past as well, and now has a promotion available, where you can purchase GoAir discount vouchers on Groupon India. You have the opportunity to purchase an INR 99 voucher, which gives you an INR 850 discount on a one-way ticket, or an INR 199 voucher, which gives you an INR 1800 discount on a roundtrip. [Edit: Readers tell me you need INR 8000K worth of ticketing to be able to use it, something not stated in the T&C] The vouchers are one-time use only, and generated instantaneously and delivered to your email. However, to use…
Air Asia India all set to launch
Over a year back, I wrote about Air Asia’s launch in India, along with the Tata group. Things have moved a lot since then, and Air Asia India went through a series of regulatory clearances over the past ten months or so. There were a lot of roadblocks along the way, in the sense that the existing airlines did not want to have a new player amongst them, so they banded under Federation of Indian Airlines to try and stop access to India for this 3-way joint venture. A few weeks ago, they received their first plane, VT-ATF from Airbus, and on May 1 and 2, they conducted their proving flights, where the staff and the regulatory officials flew as…
Great Summer Fares 2: Air India offering INR 35K+ fares to Italy
Yesterday, I wrote about the 30K fares to Paris on Jet Airways, which I think is a very good fare to inspire you to visit the City of Lights. There is also British Airways, which is doling out vouchers for you to apply for your visa and giving you a discount accordingly. I wrote a few days back about Air India’s launching flights from Delhi to Milan and Rome. This will be a Boeing 787 flight, which will stop at both the cities, and do a circular route back home. While Air India has not started selling this flight on their own website, they seem to be offering great fares from anywhere in India to Milan/Rome, at a flat price…
Great Summer Fares: INR 30K Jet Airways to Paris/book before May 9
There are some pretty good deals out there in case you all are looking to travel to Europe later this year and have still not planned out your vacations. First destination, Paris. I’ve written about the Jet Airways flight between Mumbai and Paris, which is starting operations from May 14, 2014. Initially, this flight is planned for 4 days a week on an Airbus 330-200, and as of end June the flight will become a daily flight. Now, initially Jet Airways was offering this flight at INR 45K for economy tickets. Now, they are offering special fares which you can book for INR 30K all inclusive for travel between Mumbai/Paris and back in economy on www.jetairways.com or even via GoIbibo,…
SpiceJet offers an On-Time Guarantee from today
SpiceJet, one of India’s low cost carriers, has been working pretty hard under the hood to go back up in the aviation game. When I last flew them, which was at least 15 months back, my flights were so horribly delayed and so tardily handled that I stopped flying them. However, since earlier this year, I have been hearing good things about various aspects of flying on SpiceJet. There has been a good On Time Performance posted for a few months in a row, and they have some good meals to buy inside the plane, and of course, all the sales they keep doing to bring in more passengers over to their planes. One of the new initiatives in this…
Etihad’s new First/Business products on A380 & 787s
Etihad has been silent for the longest time on a cabin refresh, and yesterday, they shared details of what could be the most luxurious products in the air. Stay with me, they are creating, Apartments and full Residences in the air. Also Studios. The Suites class product is a few year old, and Etihad has a fully enclosed suites as well on its aircraft, along with Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Jet Airways amongst others. So, they took this opportunity to have new aircraft to do something new altogether. Since 2008, Etihad worked with 3 different companies, no less, to design the new experience and product for their upcoming planes. The Residence, which will be single or double occupancy, is targeted…
Flight Review: 9W 572 Mumbai to Kuwait, Jet Airways, Economy
Last month, I was on my way to a meeting to Kuwait, and I did my standard drill. I usually arrive there on one of the two evening flights with Jet Airways, stay the night at a hotel, do the meeting, and wait for the flight back which only happens the next evening. Perhaps I need to optimize these a bit, but anyhow, this time I was back on my old warhorse, Jet Airways, which was going to take me from Mumbai to Kuwait International Airport on the early departure flight. For the 17:55 flight, I arrived at the new Mumbai Terminal 2 at about 15:00, which was an early arrival by all standards. I was joined by a colleague,…
Citi offering 2x PremierMiles on International Spends
You know it only too well. I love PremierMiles. There are at lease 2-3 times promotional spending periods during a year, and even otherwise I earn 10 miles per INR 100 on airline spends, and 4 miles per INR 100 spend on every other spend. The last time they offered double miles, I went home with another 50K extra miles since I figured in their top 5000 spenders. Each mile converts into one airline mile with 9 FFPs, or also converts with 3 hotel partners. I’d really like them to add Starwood and Hyatt to the list of hotel partners, but overall, it is a lovely card from my perspective. Now, they are back with an International spends promotion. Something…
Air India looks all set for Star Alliance this summer
Hot on the trails of SriLankan Airlines joining oneworld, Air India seems to be working on all frontiers to get set to join Star Alliance. While there have been a lot of news reports in the past couple of days, this interview with the CEO of Star Alliance, Mark Schwab seems to nail the date down to June or July 2014 after an endorsement from the CEO’s of other Star Alliance members as of 23 June 2014. Our CEOs get together in London on the occasion of the new Star Alliance terminal at London Heathrow on 23 June where we expect an endorsement vote to be taken up on Air India joining Star. And we are just beginning to coordinate…
