I am aware that an airline executive once made the famous suggestion to nick off one olive from each meal served, and the airline saved about $40,000 on those olives per annum. I am writing this post 33,000 feet in the air on a BOM-DEL flight 9W 361. Here is a little game for you to play, the good old find the difference types: The first picture above you’ll see is from a BOM-MAA Jet Airways flight in April 2011, which was serving dinner. The next one is from today on the BOM-DEL route where I again was served dinner. Have you been able to find out about 5 differences between the two? Take your time. Now list down…
A flying palace: A private A380 with all the bells and whistles…
Imagine a 3- floor Airbus A380 with a private concert hall, a flying garage to park your Royce or Maybach, and a Turkish bath on separate floors. I’d name it a flying palace though you could call it by any other name. Word has it that a member of the Saudi Royal family is going to get one of these 0.5 billion USD luxury birds soon, to be able to retire their B747 they use right now. The Airbus airframe, with a list price of about USD 370 million, is being modified with expensive fittings of USD 170 million by the UK based design firm DesignQ, who helped Virgin Atlantic design the Upper Class Suite. The private jet will have …
Virgin Australia and Singapore Airlines alliance to launch in a week…
Alliances are not a matter of choice but a matter of need for airlines in Australia for a network that extends their own and gets them to serve flyers who want to travel all over the place. In the case of Qantas, they have the oneworld allliance by their side. But considering Virgin does not like getting into alliances, or at least not just yet, they have been working with an interlining strategy so far where they have a network of partners such as Etihad, Delta and Virgin Atlantic to complete their network.However, they now have an alliance with Singapore Airlines, which should be a gamechanger in feeding traffic to their domestic network from the hub of SIN. The alliance,…
Cathay Pacific to add Premium Economy seats from Q1 2012
Cathay is quite easily a very likeable airline, and I love them for all the shorthauls I do when travelling around Hong Kong on work trips. However, now they are giving me a reason to try out their long haul product, with the launch of the Premium Economy Class in March 2012. These will be introduced first on the routes to Sydney, Toronto, Vancouver and New York, followed by London, LA, San Francisco and continental Europe. The announcement made to members of the Marco Polo Club loyalty program detail the added benefits of the Premium Economy class which is, much more than just the seat! According to Cathay, there will be a separate priority check-in and priority boarding over Economy…
Reader Question: “Which is the best program to credit Indian flights to”?
Reader Romina pinged me with a question last week, and I thought it was a good question to address here for everyone. Her question was… Hi AJ, I’m going to India, with miles, of course, but I have to buy two domestic legs and was wondering if you have any suggestion. …. If I buy the tickets, what is the best international airline to credit the miles from KingF, jet airways and air india? … I believe this question is something which a lot of travellers to India would have on mind. My answer to her was in terms of American programs, but I’ll drop in a word with regard to other programs too. Indian airlines are not yet…
Delta/Amex offer Status Match and $ 200 Gift Card for US Readers (till January 31, 2012)
This was more a chance discovery but I thought it was in the best interest of everyone to know. American Express and Delta have come up with a wonderful offer, although targetted, which provides a very easy way to get Delta status all the way upto Feb 2013 with one round trip flight till Jan 2012. All you have to do, is to register an eligible American Express Card on this website, pop-in your non-status Delta Skymiles number, book a round-trip on Delta which is not in the fare classes R/O/N/E, and you’ll be eligibile for a $200 Gift Card from Amex. Also, if you have elite status on another carrier, which was at least valid till December 2012, you’ll…
Hilton HHonors to offer 30% Reward points back on Premium Reward Stays
Hilton is lining up a slew of new offers these days, much like the other hotel chains. They recently came up with the HHonors Resort Stay offer, and now are, sort of, matching the Carlson offer to stay at their properties and get reward points back, though, with a caveat. Hilton has just introduced a new offer to book and stay on HHonor Premium Room Rewards, or on Points & Money redemptions, and get 30% of the HHonors Points back into their account a few weeks down the line. If you remember, Hilton revamped their program and downgraded most hotel redemptions a few months back by classifying almost every nook and cranny of their hotels as a Premium Room. So, now…
Finally, a credit card which earns me lots of miles in India!
I’ve been on the case for looking out for a GOOD mileage earning credit card out of India for a few years, but I think I finally have found one. Mileage earning is not a big phenomenon in India, at least not as much as the USA. However, for a few of us travel nuts who like to be in the know and optimise ‘travel well’ while still not paying a bomb, this is an important tool in the wallet. There are all sorts of travel cards in India now, but I was just not going to go out to sign up for a few for the heck of it. If mileage earning is based on spend, then I could…
Lufthansa offers discounts for travels from AsiaPac & Middle East stations to Europe
Lufthansa has teamed up with Mastercard for a promotion that spans most of their Asia Pacific and Middle East stations under coverage. Uptil January 31, 2011, you can head to a special website and drop your name and email address to get yourself a special one-off discount coupon in your email from Lufthansa. The deal basically produces a discount coupon which can be applied on your account when you are trying to make a booking from one of these countries listed below to fly on Lufthansa to Europe, via lufthansa.com. Take note, this excludes everything except for LH code flights. Travel for tickets booked on this voucher have to be between 07 November 2011 and 14th May 2012. Also, they are…
7 Weeks to the oneworld MegaDo: Preparing for seat 33A!
Yeah, the days to rough it out in coach on the charter are coming closer 😉 In case you were wondering where did this weekly update vanish last week (week 8), well, nothing much moved so I thought it would be better to not bore you with the ramblings 😀 Some interesting developments have happened over the last week, which I think I should tell you about the OWMD. I noticed that the earlier schedule confirmed that Cathay Pacific, American Airlines and British Airways was going to participate in the program (some at JFK, some at DFW, some at LHR, and some more than once). But in a new development when AA announced their auction for 2 seats on the sold-out…
When Lufthansa became Jet Airways
Being the inquisitive soul I am, I was working on another blogpost for the readers today. This one concerned Lufthansa in India. Now, out of pure guess work and intuition, I typed away http://www.lufthansa.co.in/ in my browser to check my facts. As you all would know, .co.in is the domain registration for corporations in India. But, I quickly hit F5 and then again, because I could not believe what I saw… Yes, I thought it could be the 3AM effect when I am wide awake due to the last Gingerbread Cookie Latte I had a few hours back with a huge helping of Carrot Cake. So, I tried it on another browser, and then on another computer. Same results…. End…
