Last week was the fare-sale from Indigo and SpiceJet, where they were offering fares as low as Rs. 1,699 for a 72 hour period. Now, it seems, full-service carrier Air India has decided to follow the same route and offer a fare sale on all its domestic routes. From today till November 21, Air India will be offering all inclusive fares in four fare slabs Rs. 1,799, Rs. 2,699, Rs. 3,699 and Rs. 4,199 for flights on all their domestic routes for the period of travel being between 16th January to 31st March 2013. Here are some of the fares which will be available: Chennai-Delhi: Rs 3,699/- Delhi-Kolkata: Rs 3,699/- Chennai-Mumbai: Rs 2,699/- Delhi-Mumbai: Rs 3,699/- Chennai-Kolkata: Rs 2,699/- Kochi-Trivandrum:…
Air India
Tag Archives for Air India.
Air India’s Mileage redemption is back online
Air India’s frequent flyer website, www.flyingreturns.co.in had knocked off the capability to redeem miles online with effect from 17 August 2012, temporarily. Many wondered why this decision was taken. I did not have a chance to write about it then, but was seemingly due to the abuse of their online redemption system by some insiders (yes, don’t be surprised!) Anyways, the good news is the system is back up live now and you can make your award redemptions online going forward. I hope they’ve been able to plug the loopholes that caused them to take the system offline. You see a screenshot of the live system again. Air India is not the best airline out there to fly around India…
Air India 787: Flying to Frankfurt from Oct 15!
Air India recently received its third 787 plane, the first one completely built in their new facility in Charleston. This plane, VT-ANI has arrived in India on Tuesday, and now Air India has the sort of numbers to rotate planes for an international flight of the medium/long-haul variety. Like I posted earlier, this was the plane expected to be handed over a while back. Another 787 is coming to them in October 2012, and then one more expected by the end of this year. Air India is now expecting to launch their international flights on the Delhi-Frankfurt route from October 15, 2012. However, habitual of them, they have not updated this in the GDS yet, and there is no trace…
Indian Government admits to being partisan to Lufthansa
I was just about to shut my laptop after writing my last post on the Air India – Star Alliance wriggle. But I just happened to note a new news report from The Economic Times, which also got a soundbyte from the aviation minister of India at the same place Reuters got its news from. For posterity sake, rather than quoting the article, let me leave a screenshot, because stories can be refiled online after an intervention. Now, let me quote the relevant bits: Civil Aviation minister told media that Lufthansa, which is the founding member of Star Alliance, was given a lot of benefits to ensure that Air India joins the grouping. “I believe a lot of facilities were…
Air India is back to Lufthansa for Star Alliance again
You have to give it to Air India, they are making an attempt unparalleled in history to join an alliance. When they had the ball in their court, they just wouldn’t move fast enough and took 4 long years getting ready for integration. As a result, last year Air India was given the boot from Star Alliance, making them the first airline ever to be thrown out before joining. Jet Airways was extended the official invite to join the alliance instead. Now, Air India has gone back to Lufthansa for the nth time to ask for their assistance in getting into the little circle of airlines. This has been reported by Reuters today. India plans to ask Germany’s Lufthansa AG…
Spoof on Air India’s 787 Dreamliner
I saw this interesting spoof on Air India’s new 787 planes, which I am sure would leave you in splits! Please scroll over to 16:00 Minutes, or use this link to watch it directly on YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZetzkhvLUk&feature=youtu.be&t=16m Enjoy the dreams! (H.T. to BangaloreAviation.com) Live From A Lounge is present on Facebook, Twitter & available via email, RSS.
Air India unleashes a fare war, Jet Airways, Indigo & SpiceJet follow!
This was bound to happen, I say. Air India has not been having its ‘fair’ share of the Indian domestic market for the past few months, where Indigo has taken the lead now (27.6% as of August 2012) and Jet Airways (along with JetLite) are the second largest players (with 25.2% marketshare of Indian domestic pax). Air India has been lagging behind for a long while and now at 18.2% marketshare. So, finally, the political masters of the airline, read the Indian civil aviation minister, one day told the airline it should quickly get marketshare. When there is no plan, the one plan that works beautifully in a price-sensitive market such as India is undercutting. This is what Air India…
Air India’s 787 updates
Air India received its first Boeing 787-8 airplane a couple of weeks back, and started to put it on domestic service after some confusions. The Aeroblogger website carries an interesting guest post, which is a trip report on the Delhi-Bangalore segment served by the plane. In the meanwhile, Air India received its second Dreamliner VT-AND in mid-September as well. Word is that VT-ANI, the first Dreamliner built in Charleston will be also handed over to Air India shortly. Air India is picking up good loads at least on the Delhi-Bangalore flight of the 787. The trip report hints to that, and also a pilot who said recently AI to Bangalore was going with 244 pax on board. Keeping that in…
Air India’s first revenue flights of the Boeing 787
Like the regular readers know already, Air India received their first Boeing 787 planes about a fortnight back. It took them 15 days to start deploying them on revenue flights while other airlines such as Ethopian took delivery and had a party flight on the way into Ethopia itself. I’ve been circumspect about the success of Air India with these new planes being inducted, however, I finally was able to confirm the schedule a few days back and I put it out on a post for aviation lovers to read and book up if they wanted to be on that flight. However, looks like Day 1 was a washout for the airline. Air India’s marketing machinery sucks and almost everyone…
Air India’s 787 first revenue flight on DEL-MAA 19 Sept ’12!
Air India, the confused Indian carrier, is up to it. They took a long while deciding when to offer the 787 flights to the public, and as per a FlyerTalk thread, this is also due to the infighting between the old Air India management and the Indian Airlines crew (which was on paper merged into AI in 2005). That said, they have finally loaded the first flights of their recently acquired Boeing 787 into their reservation systems, and the first revenue flight of the bird will be on 19th September 2012 on DEL – MAA (AI 639). Here is the extract from AirlineRoutes.net which confirmed this: Delhi – Chennai eff 19SEP12 AI439/440AI439 DEL0700 – 0940MAA 788 DAI430 MAA1045 – 1325DEL…
Why I am not too hopeful with the Air India 787 induction?!
The Air India B787 take off from Charleston I’ve been sounding negative all along about Air India being actually able to make some difference with the cutting edge 787 being added to their fleet. After a comedy of errors all these months, as the plane took off from Charlseton yesterday to be flown to Delhi, I know a lot of India is feeling like this plane is going to change the fortunes of Air India. I can’t support that view, because I’ve seen Air India go down and down over the months and years from the sidelines. Here are some things that point to them being clueless about the whole airline business maybe. Perhaps one of India’s respectable aviation journalist,…
