Like I’d written on this blog about 14 months back, India had received a downgrade of its safety assessment rating from the American civil aviation authority FAA, which conducts an inspection on the regulators of all the countries who operate flights to the USA. The downgrade was done on the premise that India’s regulator did not have the expertise to supervise India’s airlines, and needed to beef up their know how to be able to get back to Category 1. The impact of this downgrade, a privilege that only few other countries had, was that India’s airlines could not launch new flights to the USA, and the ones which they already had, would face additional scrutiny. Also, no American airlines…
Miscellaneous
Tag Archives for Miscellaneous.
5 reasons why it is a good time to be earning airline miles in India right now
I often get asked about how to score a mileage ticket, but I don’t get asked as often about how to earn the miles. People think miles are earned only by flying, something that has changed over the years. Miles can be earned with so many activities, and every activity counts towards your goal for that reward ticket. So stay with me for a moment and let me build my argument. As someone who has been travelling for a lot of years (maybe not as long as some of you who have been flying since I was in my diapers!), I’ve noticed a genuine shift in the way airlines have moved from rewarding loyalty to withdrawing all the perks to…
My oops moment: booked a wrong ticket!
Just a couple of days back, I was watching a rerun on Up In the Air, and there is a part where George Clooney a.k.a. Ryan Bingham says I do not do anything till it does not affect my mileage balance And I think just the next morning I felt inspired to take on some more on my plate. I got a call requesting me to book a ticket for someone’s international travel, since they knew I could get them a good deal within a short amount of research, and this one was willing to let me book it on my credit card. WOW! The next thing I know is a time crunch, and between meetings and all of a…
Google Flights launched for India
Hunting down a fare just became cheaper. Google Flights, which is a visual interface offered by Google to meta-search for flights, is now available in India at www.google.co.in/flights. The beauty of this interface is that you will be able to now search for flights by date, date ranges, calendar, location and even your budget for a random trip. Dates: Google Flights offers a calendar feature, where you can see one-way or round trip pricing for various sectors across days in one go. Take for instance this round-trip pricing on BOM-DEL for end of January. You can click on the graph, and customise by duration. You will get options to see various flights by fare and by time as well. Clicking…
Last minute holiday plans? Tips to pay reasonable fares (in India)
On Sunday, I was at the Mumbai Airport Terminal 1A, flying over to Delhi for the holidays. I had a busy year, and I am still not done with it, with social and family commitments to come up for the next few days. Anyhow, the rush at the airport made me realise how many people were heading all over the place: some to visit family, some on vacation and so on. It may also be that a lot of plans are going belly up because Spicejet is in deep trouble. However, I see, at least on metro segments, all hope is not lost to get home on a reasonable fare. In fact, I myself cancelled a late night ticket on…
Travel is not the cohort of the rich
While my government (of India!) continues to look at air travel as a cohort of the rich, due to which they are keeping aviation turbine fuel so highly taxed for years, I recently happened to notice a great inspiring story on the Internet about a Tea Vendor, who has been saving diligently to fulfil his travel ambitions… As per NewsMinute, which originally carried the story, a gentleman called Vijayan, based in Cochin, has been a Tea vendor for over 40 years, and he has been saving diligently an amount of INR 300 ($5) everyday for his travels. Not only has he been able to travel around India, which I believe is full of scenic places to go, he has been…
Always check those emails from airlines
A couple of weeks back, right after Diwali, I found an email my partner forwarded to me which was sort of worrisomely worded. And, it was from Air India, harmlessly subjected about a schedule change. She did not give it much importance at that moment, and did not open the email. On check-in, we realised her flight was now rescheduled and brought ahead over an hour. In fact, the flight she was booked on was actually cancelled (AI 626 LKO-BOM), and instead they decided to make the BOM-LKO flight a circular flight BOM-LKO-VNS-BOM flight with flight number AI 625. All these details were in the email, except we did not see it in the first time. Yawn, now on the…
UK to allow Indians transit without UK Visa
Regular readers of the blog must remember the incident where my passport got stuck with the British consulate in Mumbai and I could not make it to a meeting in time in Europe. This was the result of a long time policy of the UK, which ensured that Indians had a transit visa or a visa of some sort for the UK, if they were just transit through the country, and were not going to enter the borders. The policy did not apply if you were transiting to go to the US/Australia/New Zealand, or had a valid residence permit in the EU. This morning, I got word that the need for a transit visa for the UK is being withdrawn…
I’m coming home…
Oh boy. I hate going quiet on the blog but sometimes life takes you places where you take a plane and go, and there is just so much going on that your laptop is perpetually starving for battery and hence the posting has to wait. So, the past few weeks, while I’ve been trying to post, I’ve been over to Europe, the USA, and then after a quick trip to Kolkata, I found myself again on the road for two weeks in a row… which was essentially supposed to be one trip to start with. I was over to the Netherlands for a week, and while I was supposed to do some more meetings in other parts of Europe while…
3 Tips for being better Economy Class travellers
I’ve just been on the road for the past few weeks. Like I earlier mentioned, I’d had to hop on a plane to go around Europe about 15 days back, and then followed it up with a trip to the USA over the last weekend. As a result, I did fly about 31,000 butt-in-seat miles over the past 2 weeks, and I am maybe in a state of jet lag right now, since I’ve only gotten 3 hours of sleep in my bed and I am back to a state of work now. A part of these trips was in business class, where I managed to clear upgrades. Another part was in premium economy, but for the most part, I…
Back in town!
I’ve had a crazy week at work, and this has led to no posts this week. Like I mentioned earlier this week, I sort of believed that the Brits would commit to efficiency, however they did not. So, I had a delayed start to a long week of a work trip. When I was sure that I was good to go, I did make the trip, and here was the routing. I did all of these segments in 4 days, apart from the zillion work commitments which took me there, and yes, there was another 6-7 hours of driving which you of course do not see because this is an airline map. I flew Jet Airways on the way to…
