Indigo just put up a flash sale at 12 midnight India time valid for the next 72 hours, where they are offering flight tickets on all domestic routes at a significant discount on the base fare. You could end up saving quite a bit if you have your travel plans for early next year firmed up during this time frame. Take a look at some comparisons I made for you below: Mumbai to Delhi would cost about Rs. 4,800 one way on 9 January 2013 which is not in the sale period. But with the sale on, it goes down to Rs. 3,500 one way. Sweet. This is only valid on the domestic segment flights of Indigo, not the international…
Are you ready to travel this weekend?
Diwali is here, which means, that time of the year when I will find the most number of people on the airports going over somewhere. Here is a screenshot from the Jet Airways website last evening on a trunk route: And here is this morning, when I had tried to check-in… most people were still waiting for a sign from God to web check-in! That made me think, let me do a post for you guys to get ready for holiday travel! Here are the things to do: a) Check-In: If you’re planning to get on a plane, go and check-in now on the airlines website. Don’t worry about the disclaimer from Indigo and SpiceJet that only hand baggage passengers…
Do NOT behave like this on a plane
There are and there will continue to be weirdo’s in this world. A couple of days back, on a Mumbai – Delhi Indigo Airlines flight, one of these blokes stood up and acted violent on a plane. When he started charging towards the cockpit, the crew had to block the way with a food cart. He went to the extent of slapping an airhostess as well. The passenger was brought under control, and handed over to airport security on touchdown. These are the kind of passengers who don’t just bring us shame, but stricter security procedures! Do not behave like this on a plane, okay? Live From A Lounge is present on Facebook, Twitter & available via email, RSS.
Ethiopian upgrades Mumbai flight to a 787 daily
Ethiopian, the first African carrier to receive the Boeing 787, is now putting up a daily service to Mumbai from 11th November onwards with their 787. The initial plan for this service was 25 November, but ET brings it up ahead and replacing the Boeing 767 which flew this route earlier. As per AirlineRoute.net, here is the schedule of the flights: Addis Ababa – Mumbai Service begins from 11NOV12, previously planned from 25NOV12 ET610 ADD2120 – 0450+1BOM 788 DET611 BOM0540 – 0800ADD 788 D ET611 with 787 service from 12NOV12 Ethiopian is a Star Alliance member airline, and their 787 looks amazing from the inside, as compared to national carrier Air India’s 787. This gives one more option to those…
Jet Airways ICICI Bank CC: Increased Sign-up bonuses till Nov 30
You must be wondering why I haven’t spoken much about this card yet. A few weeks back I’d detailed the launch of the Jet Airways ICICI Bank Credit Card range, and also how it was a better product than the HDFC Bank Jet Airways Credit Card. Somehow, the actual delivery of the card to the customers was delayed, but I now hear things are all good to go, and card applications are all set and being processed. ICICI Bank had launched a pre-booking offer, offering 50% bonus on the welcome miles they were going to provide. So, with the highest end card, i.e., Sapphiro, you could earn up to 5,000 bonus JP Miles over and above the 10K you were…
Citibank PremierMiles offers 30% transfer bonus on British Airways Avios & 20% on Etihad Guest miles
I don’t know if Citi is playing catch up with the American Express offer for 30% bonus miles on Avios transfers / Etihad Guest Miles or it is their own initiative, but they just got some new brownie points in my book. I’d been secretly wondering if there were ever going to be bonus offers on mileage transfers via Citi PM, but looks like Christmas did come early. For those of who look to redeem your miles for international travel, I find British Airways Avios to be an acceptable program over some other partners Citibank has for their card. Delta – bad availability, Singapore Airlines – expensive (as compared to others), Etihad – very expensive redemptions. With BA’s distance based…
Have you ever been to a vegetarian washroom at a chain hotel?
I happened to notice on the stream of a follower on Twitter, who is a bigtime traveller for work, a picture he posted from the Marriott Pune. Essentially, Shakahari means Vegetarian in Hindi, and it is the name of one of the restaurants at the hotel. The hotel does not seem to realise the goof-up yet. I hope you can! I hope you could make sense of what went wrong here… Live From A Lounge is present on Facebook, Twitter & available via email, RSS.
Multiple ways to connect with Live from a Lounge!
I realised it has been a while since I informed you about what is going on and how are things at the back end of the blog. Some of you’ve also pinged in to ask about my columns. First things first, there have been some excessive downtimes with BoardingArea overall of late, and these have been analysed to belong mostly to Amazon Web Services, the cloud server that is a part of the problem. However, some other times it is more some lines of bad code as well, but there is assurance that BoardingArea will be moving to a better server soon, so thanks to the folks who manage BoardingArea for that. Next, how are we doing? Thank you for…
Winner: Spot the Mistake Contest!
A few days back I’d put out a small contest, asking all of you to identify various airline logo mistakes with a kiosk placed outside Mumbai CSI Airport Terminal 2. Now, I received a whole lot of replies, but here are the ones I was looking for. Most of you got 2 right, but not the third one: a) Continental Airlines merged with United, and operates under the United name now, the board still stated Continental b) Qantas no longer flies from Mumbai c) Kingfisher is there and is stated as a oneworld member. Now, this picture was clicked before Kingfisher’s license to fly was suspended, so the real catch there I was looking for was that it was a…
American Airlines announces double elite qualification miles & redeemable miles!
Just when I was getting a little anxious about how to retain my AA EXP status this year, since AA cut out the ORD-DEL flight which was a favourite, they came back with a bang. There is a reason I love AAdvantage over my home programs as well if possible. They really know how to take care of their elites very very well. So, with the new promotion, non-elites can become elites faster, and elites can earn 300% RDMs (100% EQMs+100% bonus RDMs + 100% promo EQMs). Non-elites will move to the elite promotion the day they move into the ranks, during this promotion period. And yes, non-elites will also earn double RDMs for the period Nov 16 – Nov…
Citibank PremierMiles: Etihad Guest is a partner, Indigo changes & dynamic redemptions go mainstream
While I write this, I hope you’ve all registered for the PremierMiles top 2000 spenders contest for this quarter where these guys get to double their miles. Contest is opt – in so if you don’t register, you don’t get counted. Now, first for the big news. Etihad Guest, the loyalty program of Etihad airlines, is now a partner with the PremierMiles program. I think this went online today, since last I checked a couple of days back, this partner was not there on the list. From now on, you can also transfer your PremierMiles 1:1 on Etihad Guest account as well, though Etihad charging 147K for a BOM-JFK roundtrip is not giving me a good feeling on these guys…
