In one of the most amusing stories I’ve read recently, Air India paid out the value of 700 tickets to its employees, for tickets which were free in the first place. Air India has had a companion flies free promotion on offer for a while, where a full fare ticket in any of the three cabins gets you another ticket in the same cabin free of cost. You could find details of the promotion here. However, as per this news report in the Hindustan Times, The deal is good enough as it is, but in Air India it came to mean other things. There, passengers (read Air India employees) travelled on the free ticket and then sent it to the…
Air India
Tag Archives for Air India.
Air India to connect Amritsar to Birmingham via Delhi on the B787
Its been in the GDS systems for a few days already, however Air India finally came around to announcing their Amritsar (ATQ) – Delhi (DEL) – Birmingham (BHX) flight on their new Boeing 787 planes from 1st August 2013. The new route will be operated 4 times a week on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and is aiming to connect the burgeoning Indian community in Birmingham and Amritsar. Passengers from and to Amritsar will not have to change planes at Delhi. This is the second new route for the B787 in August. The other one getting launched is the B787 flights to Australia. Here are the timings of the flight, as per AirlineRoute.net : AI113 DEL1330 – 1800BHX 788 x357…
Air India to launch Delhi–Sydney/Melbourne triangular flights on their B787s
Back in February 2012, I had written a post about the plans Air India had to launch their Boeing 787 flights to go over to Australia, in a triangular flight to Sydney and Melbourne. The timing aspect did not quite work out in the manner they thought they’d like to launch, and late 2012 has now become August 2013, however, they are good to go, and launch a daily flight as of end-August 2013 between these cities. They are going back to Australia after 16 years, and I hope they get enough traffic to justify this decision. As per AirlineRoutes.net, the flight is going to go 4 times a week in terms of Delhi-Sydney-Melbourne direction, and 3 times a week…
Review: Flight AI 657 (DEL-BOM), Air India, Business
Introduction Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Mumbai Terminal 1A Airborne: Flight AI 660 (BOM-DEL), Air India, Economy Class Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Delhi Terminal 3 Airborne: Flight AI 657 (DEL-BOM), Air India, Executive Class Since it was only me and the television in the Altitude Lounge at Delhi, I got bored pretty quick and decided to hang out at the gate after my breakfast in the lounge. It was going to be a full flight it seemed from the numbers that were lining up at the gate. While I’ve done tonnes of early morning flights and I’ve begun to not like them much, I like the fact that planes are back at their base and hence there is less…
Review: Flight AI 660 (BOM-DEL), Air India, Economy
Introduction Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Mumbai Terminal 1A Airborne: Flight AI 660 (BOM-DEL), Air India, Economy Class Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Delhi Terminal 3 Airborne: Flight AI 657 (DEL-BOM), Air India, Executive Class After an enjoyable experience in the Altitude Lounge at Mumbai, it was time to board my first Air India domestic flight in months. I’d picked to fly an Airbus 321, because these are the newer planes for Air India on the domestic segments, and I guess they use these on the regional segments as well. I’d pre-blocked my seats for months, as the Air India web-booking system allows you to do so. I suspect this would change after the unbundling guidelines coming into effect, and…
Show Air India some Facebook love
Air India has been one of those airlines, which has never had social media presence before. Taking advantage of this, multiple lookalikes have sprung up on Twitter and Facebook. But looks like they’re upto getting their act together now, so if you’re interested, do like them on their official Facebook page which seems to be growing fast. I came by for the first time when it was only a few 100 likes old, and here and now it was 36K likes when I returned. They promise a response Monday – Friday 10 to 5 IST. Live From A Lounge is present on Facebook, Twitter & available via email, RSS.
GoIbibo flash sale today offering discounts on Jet Airways/Air India (10-12 PM IST)!
Goibibo.com has a flash sale which will be starting up a 4PM India time, and will go on till midnight today (26 May 2013). During this timeframe, they will be doling out different discount codes for different airlines during the day. Here are the discounts being offered: 4-5 PM IST: Rs. 1000 off on GoAir, on a minimum booking value of Rs. 4000 (roughly 25% off), and tickets can be booked for any dates. The promocode for this one is GOS1000. [Over] 8-9 PM IST: Rs. 250 off on Indigo and SpiceJet on a minimum booking value of Rs. 4000. The promocode for this one is GOS250. [Over] 10-12 PM IST: Rs. 300 off on Air India, Jet Airways and Jet…
Something New: Introduction
Introduction Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Mumbai Terminal 1A Airborne: Flight AI 660 (BOM-DEL), Air India, Economy Class Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Delhi Terminal 3 Airborne: Flight AI 657 (DEL-BOM), Air India, Executive Class One of these times in the past couple of months I was going to visit the family in Delhi, I thought of trying out something new, or rather different from my regular experiences in the past months which usually would be Jet Airways and the regular lounges which would include the Carnations Lounge at Mumbai Terminal 1C and the Plaza Premiere Lounge at Delhi Terminal 3. Since this trip was personal and I had to book up in advance, I decided to use a couple…
Unbundled airfares begin to take off: Indigo, Air India and Jet Airways go first
Unbundling airfares was expected to take off in a while, however the airlines are already set to go ahead and charge exotic varieties of add-on charges on top of your ticketed price right away. Indigo was one of the first to take off with the new charges, and will now charge an additional Rs. 200 if you want to pre-book a window or aisle seats on their planes. If you want a front row seat or an emergency exit, you should be ready to fork out another Rs. 500 for this privilege. They’ve fondly called this Seat Plus. If you intend to pre-assign a non-premium seat, just pay Rs. 100. This is working out exactly as I predicted on May…
Lounge Bites: May 05, 2013
I’m just trying to wriggle my way out of a bad bout of cold and flu which kept me out of action since 2-3 days. I figured a complete, medicinal recovery would be better than trying to drag my feet and keep up with work and other stuff, so I missed out some things. Here is a recap for you: Travel Agents across India seem to be off work on Tuesday 7th May 2013. So, if you depend on them, organise your business a day before or after. I am still refusing to believe this fully, but I am scared for flying Air India if this is true. Apparently on a Bangkok – Delhi flight, both the pilots went to…
I seem to have found the root cause of Air India’s frequent flyer mess
Yesterday, I wrote about how disappointed I was with the Air India frequent flyer program. It did not stop there. I went about doing some digging into the whole affair. Air India has outsourced the entire management of their frequent flyer program to a South African loyalty management company called LoyaltyPlus, to the extent that the program is hosted on external servers and not Air India’s own. Now, I assume here that a loyalty solutions company helps draw up a program and run the program and would be very involved with the on-going affairs at Flying Returns. So, I decided to have a look at their roster of clients, and it turned out that I could not find one top-notch…
