For everyone else, there are free AwardWallet accounts.

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While I am not a member of the program, since I use other Star Alliance member programs for my Star Alliance miles accruals, I’m hoping this news should help some readers who are a member in both programs and use them actively.

This also points out to the further weakening of the Membership Rewards program offered in India. They reduced the MR-earning capability a year back, then added a fee to redeem MR for miles, and then also upped the number of MR required for Mileage transfer earlier this year. Now how on earth do they expect to compete with the other products in the market, I have no idea.

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• American Express devalues Membership Rewards in India
• And now its American Express India’s turn to downgrade Membership Rewards

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Anyhow, Amex and Avios are now running a 30% transfer bonus, whereby for every transfer of 2000 Amex MR to your Avios account, you will get 1300 Avios instead of the usual 1000. This brings your cost down to 1.54 MR per Avios. This promotion runs till July 15, 2013. Transfer is usually completed within 24 hours. The minimum transfer is for 1200 MR, and would cost Rs. 250 to implement.

Do remember, Avios redemptions from India on British Airways flights usually attract hefty fuel surcharges, however, you could use it for redemptions on other oneworld airlines as well.

If you’re some Avios short for your next redemption, I’d advise you use this promotion to top-up. Going by the way things are working here, I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar promotion comes by with PremierMiles soon.

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• American Express offering 30% bonus on transfer to Avios (British Airways!)
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Last night, on one of my Jet Airways international flight, I picked up a few of these. Too bad they were not on board the last time I flew Jet Airways international from Brussels to Mumbai.

One Jet Airways’ silicon baggage tag set for one of you who share with me your best travel experience with Jet Airways. Just make sure you’re putting in your correct name and email address in the comments, along with your travel experience and your location.

One of you will receive this luggage tag, after a random drawing of all the entries received till 25 May 2013, 23:59 IST. I’ll ship it to you anywhere in the world.

Happy 20th Jet Airways!

P.S.: I just hope you’d keep it civil below, so bring it on! And while we’re talking freebies, have you checked out the free AwardWallet account you could receive?

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Jet Airways, at present has two flights, which operate from Delhi and Mumbai, go into Brussels, and one goes forward to Toronto and the other to Newark. The scissor hub allows passengers to switch in Brussels, and has been in existence since 2007.

In this statement made to Dutch website LuchtvaartNieuws.nl,  further picked up by the Business Traveller, Hogan said that Schipol would take over the routes which were earlier being serviced by Brussels.

This would be a great move for Jet Airways, because Schipol is a way bigger airport than Brussels, and gets much more traffic and more long-haul routes than Brussels. In terms of travel times, it should not be affecting travel times at all, because the two airports are about a 100 miles apart.

No time tables have been set for this move, and it will be subject to regulatory approvals, but it seems like the logical thing to do, specially with Jet Airways’ cooperation with Etihad, and then Etihad’s cooperation with KLM.

Let’s see how this works out, I’m keeping my eyes peeled. Also because then I don’t have to take the train or the KLM Cityhoppers to reach the Netherlands.

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a) Preferential Seating: I am looking at you Indigo, and I am thinking, you will try to sell almost all window and aisle seats as preferential seats maybe. Because you’re so money minded.

However, in my wildest dreams, I had not thought that imagination at Indigo would run so wild as to charging for assignment of a middle-seat on the plane as a preferred/privileged seat as well. In doing so, they were not charging for preferred seating, which was what the government notified, but for the privilege of choosing your seat before everyone else does. Way out of line from what the intentions of the government were meant to be.

This move, kind of got the nerve of the government who started making noises about regulating the unbundling bit (something they were supposed to do anyways!). Uh oh, and now quietly, without as much as a whimper, Indigo has withdrawn that middle seat charge. As of today, their latest Seat Plus offering looks like this:

The interesting bit to note here, you can now pre-assign yourself the middle seat, if you prefer.

I hope Indigo does not start to lose the respect of the flying public it worked so long to gain and get to be known for their nickeling and diming more than their on-time services.

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• India, welcome to unbundled fares!

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I arrived at the Mumbai Airport in time for the flight, in spite of the fact that it was a working day and I had a late-afternoon flight. This involved arriving at office a couple of hours earlier than usual, and skipping lunch to make the one hour plus trip across town. On arrival at the airport, I proceeded to Terminal 1A, which is currently full of banks of empty counters and only has Air India occupying the terminal. Heck, even with that, they were overcrowded in the row of counters they used.

I went ahead and joined the queue which said Golden Edge/FFP members. Heck, I am going to take a lifetime to be ever getting any status on their loyalty program, but the nuance of the logic I used was that this was the Frequent Flyer queue. No one said a thing when I popped over at the counter to collect my boarding pass.

On the other side, people who were trying to barge into the Executive Class queue (Business Class) were being turned away if they were not travelling in that cabin. Some professionalism, that!

Notice the crowd on the Air India side of things, while on the other side there is a whole row of empty counters, which has been the case since Kingfisher died.

After going through the security queues I was on my own, and I had to choose where I’d like to go. Like I mentioned, the original intention was to check out the Amex Platinum Lounge this time around, which is situated inside the Carnations Lounge at Terminal 1C around gates 4-6. However, my gate today was going to be 11, and I ended up walking towards a side of the terminal I usually don’t go to and hence am unfamiliar with. While I walked, I noticed that the incoming flight for my trip arrived ahead of time.

I don’t know if this was oversight or bad planning, but I happened to step onto an escalator which brought me to my gate. However, to go back up, there was no escalator and you’d have to climb up the stairs. With a couple of relatively heavy cabin bags, I was not stepping into that trap of going back.

I also saw the very inviting Altitude Lounge tucked away here, in a corner of the airport’s domestic terminal where no one knew about it, right opposite gate 12. However, they made it on an elevated platform, and forgot to put an escalator along. So I had to suck it up and climb the stairs anyways.

Like you’d have noticed, American Express has launched a new set of lounges, presently in Mumbai and Delhi for the members of the cards which are issued by ICICI Bank for American Express networks. Access is only available to the Sapphiro, Rubyx cards, as well as the Jet Airways Sapphiro and Rubyx cards which are on the American Express network.

The Lounge was empty, at the middle of a busy week, especially when people were all set to get out of town for a long weekend! That is because no one knew where it is. It is about a 20-seater, and pretty well done. Here are some pictures of the lounge. To access the lounge, Sapphiro members get 4 free trips per membership year at any Altitude lounge across the country, and the Rubyx members get 2 trips per membership year.

And not just that, they had a small TV lounge inside the lounge as well, the one I chose to take. A couple of couches, a Television with access to the remote and an entire lounge all to yourself, what else do you need? Here is the private lounge.

As soon as I selected the spot, the attentive crew, and there were only 2 of them manning the lounge, brought along some potato crisps and nuts along with water, and asked me for my choice of beverage. I went with Apple Juice.

Then, I was presented with an elaborate menu to choose what I wanted to eat, something I’ve only seen in the Amex Platinum Lounge before. They won me over there, because I hadn’t eaten all day, and I could get a fresh made entree now if I chose to eat. Here is the menu, I went with a Penne Arabiatta, which was made pretty well and with fresh sauces and turned in within 15 minutes.

The lounge staff was totally unobtrusive, and let me work in peace or eat in peace for almost the one hour I was at the lounge. On talking to them, I found out that the lounge was not getting much traffic (no surprise!) and maybe they’d open one in Terminal 1B as well, in the space earlier used by the Oberoi Clipper Lounge, which went missing one fine day! However, I would believe it only once it happened!

Anyhow, the lounge attendants announced my flight once it was ready to board, and I just had to pop out and head to the jetbridge to get to the flight.

Apparently you could also bring in other guests along, which would cost Rs. 650 per pax per trip, and once you run out of the complimentary visits, you’d still be able to access the lounge for the same amount.

For all the fault-finding I’ve done with ICICI Bank/ Jet Airways Credit Cards, I think this is one good feature they managed to pull out of the hat, perhaps because American Express is in charge here!

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The interesting bit at the end is a clue of things to come:

Do look forward to many more such surprises as we continue with our celebrations through the year.

Enjoy the bonuses, and if they did not come your way, do write to jetprivilege@jetairways.comto make a formal request.

Tell me how many miles did you get in the comments section.

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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 of my PremierMiles vouchers, the ones you used to earn before May 2012 for spend per Rs. 1,00,000. I’d heard a lot about some people on FlyerTalk (you know who you are if you are reading this!), that Air India had improved its service levels over the years. I thought I’d take one for the team and try out Air India’s domestic services instead of ‘the usual.’

Also, for the lounges I was not going to head out to the regular, I had intended to check out the American Express Platinum Lounge in Mumbai, now that I had access with my Jet Airways American Express Platinum Credit Card. However, I ended up trying out a couple of lounges which go with the ICICI Bank issued Jet Airways Amex cards, which were not bad at all.

So, sit back, relax and over the next few days, check out a review of Air India’s domestic economy and business class, as well as ICICI/Amex lounges at Mumbai and Delhi.

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I spent the past week travelling to the other side of the globe for the Boarding Area Conference, and then, on the way back, got a flat tire, and also stopped by in NYC for a bit. On the way back to Mumbai, I wanted to fly Singapore Airlines on their all business class A340’s which operate from Newark and Los Angeles to Singapore daily, partly because these flights are going to be discontinued in the last quarter of 2013, and the world’s two longest routes (#1 and #2) would come to an end.

Tickets on these routes routinely retail at about $7,000 roundtrip, and I was definitely not spending that kind of money for the flight. Instead, I looked up my repertoire of the various points/miles I had and decided to transfer some PremierMiles to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, which I’d be able to redeem for LAX-SIN on the all-business class LAX-SIN flight, and after a layover at Changi, bring me to Mumbai. It cost me 76,500 PremierMiles + $480 for this redemption (cash value: Rs. 2,00,000 at least). The same number of miles as it’d cost for about 7 one-way tickets on Mumbai-Delhi in economy class (cash value: Rs. 35,000).

And here is a little glimpse into what was on offer, which will be captured in a trip report at a later date.

The Star Alliance Lounge at LAX

Singapore Airlines A345 at LAX

The All Business A345 Cabin

The latest SQ Business Class seat/throne!

Hey, don’t judge me. Those socks were chosen by Singapore Airlines!

Meal service & in-between meals

Worth it you think? I’m going back to bouncing around like I have been doing for the past 5 hours at Singapore Changi Airport!

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