26th January is a great day for airlines to roll out offers for Indians travelling around the world, and this year is no different. I tried summarising a few offers for all of you in this post: Emirates is offering 10% to select destinations across the world from India for booking it up by 26 January 2014 and travel upto 10th April 2014. Destinations include Sao Paulo, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Nice, Prague, Seychelles & Cape Town. Etihad is offering business class deals to Africa, Europe & the UAE, and is valid for booking till 28th January 2014, and travel till June 30, 2014. Virgin Atlantic is offering special fares to London and onwards to the USA from Mumbai and Delhi which…
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FlyingBlue promo reminder: 30K miles biz Mumbai/Europe or 55K miles Mumbai/USA (or back!)
Last month, I had posted about the promo awards that the Flying Blue program of Air France/KLM, where you could potentially get a one-way ticket in business-class cabins to Europe for 30K miles (instead of the normal 60K), and to the USA for 55K miles (30K Mumbai – Europe, 25K Europe – USA –> two separate awards). These promotional awards, are bookable only for the months of March and April 2013. Availability looked swell even at this point of time, with even up to 6 seats available on some dates in the business cabin. So, there you go with about 3 more weeks to make use of this wonderful opportunity. It might not be the best business class in…
Mumbai to Europe for 30K FlyingBlue Miles, USA for 55K miles, all in biz class (and vice versa)
FlyingBlue, the loyalty program of KLM/Air France, recently published their promo-award charts for the months of March and April 2013. FB’s promo awards essentially provide you with a 50% off on mileage requirement using FB miles for the period concerned. Now, there were some sweet spots from my perspective for the first time. The usual redemption rate from India to Europe on Flying Blue in Business is 60K miles for a one-way redemption, but for the next two months, one could get a business class seat for the price of an economy redemption, i.e., 30K miles one-way and 60K miles roundtrip on Air France. Take for instance, this sample booking from Mumbai to Oslo, which prices at 30K miles +…
FlyingBlue might be honoring status matches
FlyingBlue has been out in the public eye, for first offering a liberal status match to their Gold status, and then geographically limiting it to Scandinavia (the original plan), and then pulling out the offer altogether. Miles and Points-holics have been worried if they will get their committed status match or not. I discovered on this FlyerTalk thread that someone has received a reply from KLM on Facebook, discussing the problem and committing to effecting the status match: Thank you so much for your patience, <redacted>. We investigated the situation and acknowledge that due to a mistake from our side the campaign allowed members from outside Scandinavia to apply for a Flying Blue Gold status indeed. Therefore we decided to…
Flying Blue offers another chance to status match Gold Status (SkyTeam ElitePlus)
FlyingBlue seems to be in the habit of offering a status match every few years to swell its ranks of elite members. They did a massive status match campaign in 2011, where you could get top-tier status with them (Platinum, equivalent to SkyTeam ElitePlus), for 2 years. Now, they are back with a new status match promotion, where your Gold status with any airline will offer you Gold Status on KLM/Air France Flying Blue. I would also assume upwards of Gold Status will also offer you Gold Status only, but this is still to be validated. So, with this promotion, all you have to do is to sign up for a KLM/Air France FlyingBlue account, which you can do here…
Dear KLM, why try to rip me off and then make me use the throwaway pricing trick?
Last week, I was in Zurich for a quick work trip, and while I was arriving from Brussels, I was going to depart onwards to Amsterdam Schipol for the next leg of my trip. While I could get BRU-ZRH as another leg on my BOM-BRU-BOM ticket (since Jet Airways had a interline partnership with Swiss), I found some pretty exhorbitant fares on the orphan leg of ZRH-AMS. To give you a bit of background, I had some constraints, this being a business trip. I was working the whole day in Zurich, and I did not want to arrive in AMS very late in the evening considering my eventual destination was Rotterdam which is a while away in terms of travel…
Travel is glamorous only in retrospect
Upcoming Alert: 9,200 miles over to Europe and back, and a Sunday in Switzerland thrown in! While I have been writing in my head for most of the past week, and on the way back home from work, but for the past few days I have had no hours to put all these thoughts on paper. Why? A trip with two month’s notice going down the wire to a last-minute clincher and the work associated with it. 14-hour workdays at the office and hardly any sleep. My travels and work are deeply interrelated. I work to travel to work to travel to work … you get the gist. And when you are the face of an organisation (or so I…
