Flight Review: AI191 Mumbai–Newark, Air India, First Class

by Ajay 13 Comments

a plate of food on a tray

A friend and regular reader of the blog, Parag Mehta, recently took a First Class flight on Air India recently to travel between Mumbai and Newark, and I requested him for a Guest Post for the blog, since long haul Air India is not on my radar in the coming days. He came back flying Etihad First Class, booked on 9W miles, but try getting two trip reports from a busy investment professional You can read my review of EY F here. Over to you, Parag! I was planning a trip to New York for the longest time, and when the time came I looked at my pile of miles, and decided to try Air India and Etihad for the…

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Vistara: Is this the Tata-SIA airline brand name?

by Ajay 1 Comment

Tata – SIA has been very guarded about the name of their airline, which will be known on Monday, August 11, 2014. The branding exercise is work in progress, and the airline executives like to say they have many options, and Vistara is just one of them. However, Tata’s PR is maybe trying to follow an Apple style leak based philosophy, where they may be spreading the word out at the last minute. Anyhow, when I put out the information about the brand launch yesterday, a reader Arpit Jain tweeted back with the name, and it seems like there is already a domain registered with the brand name as well: @LiveFromALounge @RNTata2000 So this seems to be the Airline’s domain…

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Tata – Singapore Airlines Joint Venture to announce brand name on August 11, 2014

by Ajay 1 Comment

Tata/Singapore Airlines seems to be making good progress in getting the airline off the ground by the end of this year. They are right now working on fixing up the identity of the airline, and just yesterday, did announce that they will outsource ground handling to Air India. Via Mint: Tata-SIA Airlines Ltd, the joint venture (JV) between Tata Sons Ltd and Singapore Airlines Ltd, is pursuing an outsourcing model for its operations in India and has tied up with state-owned Air India Ltd to execute parts of the strategy before its expected takeoff in October. Air India will manage ground-handling and engineering services for Tata-SIA, said two executives at the national airline who spoke on condition of anonymity. The…

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Manufactured Spending India: An opportunity to meet your spend limits

by Ajay 11 Comments

One of the key criteria that a lot of banks put out these days is to meet a certain amount of spend before you can have access to a bonus kitty of miles. The intention is to get the customers to spend a certain amount of money on the card in a certain period of time, and get them used to the card. Take for instance the following: Citibank PremierMiles wants you to spend INR 50,000 to be able to receive an extra 10,000 PremierMiles on a new application within the first 60 days. IndusInd wants you to spend INR 125,000 to be able to earn an extra 20,000 JPMiles within the first 100 days. SBI Air India Visa Signature…

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Uber updates from India + Promocodes

by Ajay 2 Comments

I haven’t written much about Uber recently, after my not so great experiences with them in Mumbai. From being a daily customer, I’ve now become a 4-6 times a month customer of sorts while I am in Mumbai. But they have been doing some great stuff in the other Indian cities they operate in. First and foremost, Uber has launched UberX in India. Available in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi at the moment, UberX is the cheaper Uber, where instead of premium cars, they send you regular sedan class cars such as Maruti Swift Dzire or Toyota Innova your way. Since for me I just need a car to go from place A to B, I am pretty happy with the…

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SPG offering credit / double points for India stays

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Starwood is offering upto $50 credit for booking a stay in the Indian properties, along with the Maldives and Bangladesh ones. You need to reserve using the code CREBAR to be able to enjoy the promotion. Reservations using this booking code can be made till August 10, 2014 while the stays have to be completed by December 31, 2014. The room credit will be not applicable for adjusting against the room rate, but against services at the hotel, such as dining and spa. I checked up the rates, and the promotion is valid on flexible rates. For instance, the ITC Rajputana is offering rates of INR 8500 per night, and offering USD 25 credit, which could be good for a…

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SpiceJet launching SpiceMax on August 15, 2014

by Ajay 1 Comment

SpiceJet Max was the earlier name of SpiceJet’s bundled services, where they offered any seat access as a part of the product proposition. This helped getting the premium seats (the front and emergency exits) before anyone else by paying for it. Here is a blurb for the earlier version of SpiceJet Max. Now, the airline is reinventing itself over the past months, and like I wrote here in May, SpiceJet has been reconfiguring all their Boeing 737s to offer a genuine enhanced legspace product for which the airline could charge the premium (INR 500-600 while booking). The product has already been available on some planes, as they came back from reconfiguration, but from August 15, 2014 the product will be…

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Jet Airways enhances domestic redemptions, guts international premium redemptions across network w.e.f. September 1, 2014

by Ajay 5 Comments

Earlier Posts: Jet Airways inadvertently exposes new redemption structure Jet Airways retracts new redemption structure Jet Privilege announces new earning structure w.e.f. August 1, 2014 Whenever an airline makes it very easy to earn miles, they also come to a point where they devalue them, and call them adjustments. However, in the case of Jet Airways, they released the new redemption rules by mistake last week, and my determination was that the airline is slashing miles required on many a domestic routes but redemptions on international routes are going to be hit very hard. Today, they officially released the new redemption chart, and have given us a month to utilise the old redemption chart before they go through with the…

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Jet Airways launches co-branded credit cards with IndusInd Bank

by Ajay 19 Comments

Jet Airways has existing co-branded credit cards with HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, American Express and a co-branded debit card with HDFC Bank. And now, they have launched the fifth product in the market, which is in collaboration with IndusInd Bank, called the Jet Airways IndusInd Odyssey Credit Card. There is also a lower product called the Jet Airways IndusInd Voyage Credit Card. The product is similar to ICICI Bank’s card in the sense that IndusInd is offering a Visa Signature version as well as an American Express version, and you can choose to have either or both for the same amount of annual fees. Lets go over the benefits then for these products: Sign-up bonus: For the Odyssey cards, you…

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Hotel Review: Hyatt Place Amsterdam Airport

by Ajay 1 Comment

a bed with white sheets and a wood headboard

I recently found myself on an extra night layover in the Netherlands, and while I usually stay put at the Manhattan Hotel, Rotterdam, in this case, I decided to head to a hotel closer to the airport, since I had a very early morning flight to catch and I wasn’t sure if the railway service would be up and running at that hour. The choice boiled down to Hyatt Place since the Sheraton across the airport was quoting at 269 Euros that night, and that is expensive just to sleep a few hours. To get to Schipol Airport from Rotterdam Central, I used the train since the distances are large enough for a Euro 100 cab ride at least, and…

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Citibank Premiermiles: New Signups get extra 10K miles for INR 50K spend in 60 days

by Ajay 22 Comments

The days of American style sign up bonuses are finally coming into India. There is a new promotion that has been sent out to members of Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer program this morning, which gives you an extra 10,000 PremierMiles for spending at least INR 50,000 on the new card within 60 days of activation. While I have a review of the Citibank PremierMiles Credit Card I did in 2012, here is a quick summary of the features: All spend earn 4 PremierMiles per INR 100 spend Airline purchases and accelerated partner spends earn 10 PremierMiles per INR 100 spend. GoIbibo, Yatra, Raymonds, Bookmyshow are some of the accelerated spend partners. All PremierMiles convert to Airline miles in a 1:1 ratio…

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