The Air India – Boeing duel is the stuff of folklore now. Air India seems to clearly be in the mood to milk the cow called Boeing Airplanes as much as it can, to add to its bleeding bottomline. Air India signed on to buy 27 787’s from Boeing, and these were expected to be brought on board starting 2009. The 787 program suffered multiple delays and the first few 787’s were certified and given away to ANA All Nippon Airways only last year towards the end of the year. Air India was next in line, and had a story that the airline could not function properly without the new planes and all its plans went awry. “Yeah, right!,” is…
Hidden tricks to help you get Rs. 600 off your airtickets
Cleartrip, one of my favourite travel aggregator websites has a new trick up its sleeve to give you discounts. Cleartrip has a lovely and clean mobilephone interface as well, which comes up if you use www.cleartrip.com via your smartphone’s browser. If you decide to book a roundtrip flight using your phone, you get another discount code ‘CTM’ which is valid for use till 31st March 2012. Using this, you get another Rs. 600 off your tickets apart from any other discounts you would have already received (from the airline or from Cleartrip). I tried using the same code in the website for Cleartrip, and it gave an error. Since the need to go somewhere obviously takes over, I booked a…
How to get a daily discounts on Spicejet!
Spicejet has quietly introduced a new promotional offer on its website a few weeks back using Quick Response codes. Under this promotion, SpiceJet reveals a new QR code on their website every morning, and also sends it around on their Twitter account @FlySpiceJet and their Facebook page. You have to use your smartphones to be able to read these QR codes and get the eventual discount code in the format SGDISxxx. If you don’t have a smartphone, you could use a website like www.onlinebarcodereader.com to access the contents of the code. Once you have the code, you can apply these to any fresh reservations you make till 11 PM on the same night. You need to plonk the code in the…
Free Malaysian F1 tickets on buying air tickets to Malaysia via Cleartrip/Yatra
Considering I am a Formula1 enthusiast as well, I found it hard to resist posting this one for you guys. If you choose to book tickets to fly to Malaysia on Cleartrip.com this week, you will get confirmed tickets to be at the Formula1 Malaysian Grand Prix to be held at the Sepang International Circuit on 25th March 2012. There don’t seem to be any terms and conditions attached. All they say is you book tickets to Malaysia on the website and within 2 days you’ll receive your grandstand passes for the qualifying race day (24th March 2012) and Race Day (25th March 2012). And the promotion is not limited by numbers so everyone who buys a ticket to Malaysia gets…
moneylife: My new column on tips for Kingfisher travellers
This week, I wrote some tips in moneylife for people who are booked to travel on Kingfisher Airlines amongst the current situation the airline is in. Check out my column here! Live From A Lounge is also present on Facebook, Twitter and available via RSS.
Kingfisher domestic schedule cuts 51% flights, pulls out of 18 domestic routes
I promised an update on the Kingfisher schedule inside India. The schedule that went up on 5th February 2012 became permanent for Summer 2012 when it went up on the GDS systems this week. AirlineRoute.net did an excellent analysis already, which I quote below: Bangalore – Chennai 2 of 6 Daily service Cancelled Bangalore – Hyderabad 2 of 5 Daily service Cancelled Bangalore – Kochi 10 of 24 weekly service Cancelled Chennai – Coimbatore 2 Daily service Cancelled Chennai – Hyderabad 1 Daily service Cancelled Chennai – Mangalore 1 Daily service Cancelled Chennai – Tiruchirapally 1 Daily service Cancelled Chennai – Vishakapatnam 1 Daily service Cancelled Delhi – Ahmedabad 1 Daily service Cancelled Delhi – Amritsar 2 Daily service Cancelled…
Kingfisher Airlines pulls out of London, Bangkok, Dhaka and Kathmandu
The bad news seems to not stop rolling for Kingfisher Airlines. I previously discussed the truncated schedules uptil March 2012 for Kingfisher Airlines international operations. A couple of days back, Kingfisher Airlines was let go from the IATA interline clearing house and the billing settlement plan, thereby taking away the revenue lines from them. Via AirlineRoute.net, the new summer schedules of Kingfisher Airlines were updated on the global distribution systems. Kingfisher Airlines has discontinued operations from London, which was its only European destination. Here is a comprehensive update: London: Delhi-London Heathrow cancelled from 10th April 2012, Mumbai – London Heathrow cancelled from 16th April 2012 Bangkok: Like I wrote before, Mumbai – Bangkok and Delhi – Bangkok was already cancelled,…
The Lufthansa 747-8i, coming to India…
Lucky at One Mile at a Time wrote about the new business class seats which will debut on the Lufthansa Boeing 747-8i, for which LH is the launch customer. I had a chance to visit the Boeing Customer Experience Centre in January 2012 as a part of the oneworld MegaDo, and I must say I was personally impressed with the 747-8i (more than the 787!) and I look forward to travelling on this bird sooner than later. Now, it seems that my quest to travel on this new bird will come answered sooner than later. India seems to be one of the 2 countries slated to get the first bunch of Lufthansa 747-8i’s apart from the United States. While Lufthansa and…
Reader question about Priority Club changes
I recently wrote about the changes which are in place now with the Priority Club Reward nights, and also about the grace period available till 18th March 2012 to make a booking at the old point redemption rate. Reader David stopped by and asked a question which I thought I should answer here since others may also have similar doubts. do you know if there is a fixed number of times that you can make a booking(s) under the old rate? It would appear that this is a one-off thing (in terms of reservations) and I couldn’t make additional bookings after utilizing my points once for an older rate As per my information and experience, there is no fixed limit…
Breaking: Kingfisher gets suspended from IATA again [updated]
Kingfisher Airlines does it again. Its almost like they are all listening to Britney Spears’ Oops I did it again. Ok, bad one! IATA has, for the second time in two months, suspended Kingfisher Airlines from their membership. This means all IATA affiliated travel agents cannot sell Kingfisher Airline tickets anymore. The airline promised to issue a statement shortly. Here is the Reuters report which talks about this. The last time around, Kingfisher Airlines took a long while to get reinstated into IATA. They blamed their problems on financial systems not working properly hence payments not reaching the IATA. Some member airlines had stopped honor tickets issued on Kingfisher Airlines stock. So, if you are booked by KFA on any other carrier,…
Air India back in the running for *A, taking Jet Airways along?
Just a couple of days back I was flipping through the Star Alliance magazine, and was wondering where were they going with Air India because there was no mention in the magazine of AI. However, it definitely was not a closed chapter since AI definitely needs to get into an alliance (amongst other things), to be able to get more traffic on its planes and shore up its finances. Last year, *A left AI on the altar when the airline was grabbing all the wrong headlines for safety issues, financial issues and the systematic failure that it was going to become. There was also news that the Government of India did not appreciate that *A wanted a second partner in…
