Shipra is my fiancée and the first of contributors at the blog. She has worked with one of the largest airline conglomerates in the world, and is now based in Mumbai. Shipra has lived, worked and travelled across 4 continents. We travel often enough, together and separately. These are her perspectives, as she gets used to the world of business and leisure travel and our hobby! The Novice Perspective: Initiating my Fiancée to Points & Miles I am the person who likes to land at the airport exactly 60 minutes prior to departure, check-in, drop my bags and head straight to board the aircraft. If I had a little extra time in hand then I’d pop into the airport duty…
Lounge
Tag Archives for Lounge.
Lounge Review: Air India Lounge, Mumbai Terminal 1A
Just yesterday, I flew over to Delhi from Mumbai, yet again. I was originally scheduled to get into Delhi on AI101, which is perhaps one of my favourite flights given it gives me access to the Terminal 2 GVK Lounge, and I get to fly a Boeing 777-300ER between the 2 hour Mumbai Delhi segment (the flight further heads to New York from Delhi). However, given that it is winters and Delhi has a massive fog problem, and I did not want to really really get into home middle of the night, I decided to change my plans. I now was going to depart from terminal 1A, from where Air India operates, and this meant I had access to the…
Review: GVK Business Class Lounge Mumbai Terminal 2
Yesterday, I wrote about the inauguration of the new GVK Lounge at the Mumbai Airport Terminal 2, which came after months of anticipation. I had some work in Delhi today, so I was supposed to take an evening flight from Mumbai to Delhi to get here. The power of mileage tickets, I could just call Air India and swap the ticket from most of their A321 BOM-DEL flights (from Terminal 1) to get a seat on their B77W which flies BOM-DEL-JFK, and hence I could head to Terminal 2 to check out the new lounge. Air India provided me with an invite to the Business Class section of the lounge, located on Level 3, since I am a Flying Returns…
Mumbai’s Terminal 2 now has new First & Business Class lounges
Mumbai’s Terminal 2, when it was open for business in February 2014, had started out with a temporary lounge, which was in itself a step-up from the earlier airport’s lounge. I wrote a full review of the interim lounge here. The airport, unlike its earlier version, was going to disallow airlines from operating their own brand lounges, and the airport operator was instead going to offer one First Class and one Business Class lounge each for all airlines to share, owned by the airport operator. There was much discussion about when these lounges were going to be open for the public. The news is, now! Just a couple of days back, the new lounges were inaugurated, and now they are…
Lounge Review: Mumbai Terminal 2 Interim Lounge
Planning the Proposal Trip to Paris One of the trip reports I’ve been holding off for a while, for the lack of adequate time to write it up. Like many of the regular readers on this blog would know, I proposed to my girlfriend in Paris this summer, and she said yes. The first thing to do was to of course, get a flight to go to Paris from Mumbai. Like I’ve mentioned before, I was going to use the Mumbai – Paris flight on Jet Airways A330-200. The context set up here was that we are going on a work trip to Europe, which was total gibberish anyways. We arrived at the Mumbai airport Terminal 2, and headed up…
Lounge Review: Plaza Premium Lounge (Domestic), Bangalore Airport
There have been two major issues I’ve had with the Bangalore BIAL Airport for as long as I remember. Having used the airport based inside the city, I find the current airport too far away, and one can’t predict travel times to the airport since you can only go by the road. The other one was, the lack of a lounge for most airlines, except for Kingfisher Airlines. Then, they rebranded the Kingfisher Airlines lounge as the Pause Lounge. However, it looks like the troubles for accessing lounges in Bangalore Airports may now be over. As of March this year, Plaza Premium opened up a couple of lounges at Bangalore, one at the Domestic side of the terminal, and one…
Lounge Access with MasterCard in India (2014)
One of the favourite features I have with my various MasterCard products in India is the ability to access lounges at various airports. Why would MasterCard do this? Well, to increase the spread of their cards with clients via Banks. Banks also look at this feature as a differentiation factor, and chip in for a few lounge trips as well. I realise I last wrote about the ability to access lounges with MasterCard products way back in 2012. Since lounge contracts change all the time, I figured it is a good time to write a new post. Under the program, holders of premium MasterCard products (issued in India by select banks) are admitted to select lounges across India, if they…
Clipper Lounge Cochin: the barest lounge ever?
Mumbai Airport Terminal 2 Clipper Lounge, Mumbai Terminal 2 Courtyard by Marriott Hotel, Kochi Airport Air India 682, Cochin – Mumbai, Economy After our three day stay at the Courtyard by Marriott, Kochi Airport, we were dropped off early morning at the Airport in a shuttle car of the hotel. We were already checked-in, and flying Air India. The airport had a Clipper Lounge, however, this was before the security hold area in the Domestic section of the airport. To access, I used my MasterCard and guested my partner using my Priority Pass. It was early morning so the lounge was empty, or maybe that was the way of life here, because it did not seem like this lounge was…
Air India offers lounge access in Delhi for INR 500
Air India has been operating a new lounge at the Delhi Airport Terminal 3 since a few months now. While I haven’t been inside this lounge, I’ve walked by on my way to the other lounges at the Domestic wing of this terminal. It is an expansive lounge, with the looks of buffet meals, big couches and is generally empty, because most of the traffic is directed to the Plaza Premium Lounge by the credit card companies, Jet Airways and Priority Pass. However, Air India offers paid lounge access to this lounge for a small sum of INR 500 ($8) only per visit (valid for two hours), and you can also ask for a shower for another INR 200 to…
Review: Pause Lounge, Bangalore Airport (Domestic)
One of my many gripes with Bangalore’s Airport in Devanahalli, apart from the distance, has been the lack of a lounge for the longest time for Jet Airways elites. Hey, they used to give you food coupons to eat in the Food Court, not appreciating that the lounge was not about the food but about the environment. This got fixed last year when Kingfisher evacuated from Bangalore Airport, and this place was made the Pause Lounge, accessible via select credit cards and for 9W elites & Business class travellers. I haven’t been able to sample this lounge for my few trips to Bangalore all this year, so this was my first time when I actually built in time into my…
Review: American Express Lounge, Mumbai Airport, Terminal 1C
Just this past long weekend, I was headed out to Goa for a vacation. Usually, I am accompanied by people, so I do not end up using the American Express Lounge at Terminal 1C, but the Carnations Lounge instead. However, since I was alone, and I had access to the lounge via my Jet Airways Amex, I decided to give it a go this time around. The lounge is set inside the Carnations Lounge itself (as a separate enclosure), The same lounge also houses Jet Airways & Go Air passengers, Priority Pass, MasterCard & Visa Access, and the recent Diners Club bearing passengers. In short, it is a crowd out there and hence I’d anyday prefer to access the Amex…
