Jet Airways revamps JetPrivilege program (in a good way!), adds benefits across the board!

I’ve dried enough ink criticizing the Jet Airway’s Jet Privilege program, with the constant devaluation that has been going on for the past few months. First, they sized down the benefits from the Jet Airways Citibank Credit Card (forcing me to move out of the card), then the lounge access was pruned. Some Jet-lovers, including yours truly, saw it coming and petitioned Jet to rethink their strategy w.r.t. JetPrivilege again.

However, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel seems to have arrived yesterday when some new benefits of the JetPrivilege program went up on the website. I’m sure we will hear more of it in the days to come, but right now Jet Airways seems to have aligned this new program with the recent brand realignment between Jet Airways and JetKonnect.

You can now access the Jet Airways website which lists the new benefits. Here is a summary of the key changes which have happened:

Bonus JP Miles for online booking and e-checkin: Jet Airways has been offering 500 JP Miles for booking tickets via its own channels and 250 miles for checking in on e-channels for a while. Nice bonuses for something you’d have done anyways. Now, the benefits have been introduced on the low-cost arm JetKonnect as well, however, 250 miles for buying your tickets online and 125 miles for e-check in. Back in the day of JetLite, S2 code flights got no such credits while the 9W code low-fare flights also got the full-fare benefits. All that has now been realigned.

100% Base miles on all revenue fare classes (except G) on Jet Airways: Quite frankly, earning miles flying domestic was not lucrative from a mileage perspective so far. Most revenue fare classes would earn 20 – 75% miles, so if you wanted status flying around India, you were better off doing it via tier points. However, 9W flights will not give you 100% flight miles. Which means, no more sights like these, where I flew a 708 miles flight but only got 142 miles for it:

75% Base miles on all revenue fare classes in Economy (except V) and 100% in Business class on JetKonnect: JetKonnect is low-fare, low-cost or something like that, so the mileage should also be less, right? I haven’t tried the product yet and hence won’t comment on that. However, you’ll get 75% on most fare classes. I am not sure if V is the lowest earning class yet, but I’ll report back once I find something.
Priority Baggage tags for Silver: Priority baggage handling was the domain of the Gold and Platinums (the highest and 2nd highest tier, I mean) in the programs I have experience with so far. However, JP has now extended this benefit to Silver members as well.

These are some of the key changes. The one thing I can’t see them making their mind about just yet is the lounge access for Silvers. I was very excited to see on the web that they had granted across the board access to Silver members travelling in Economy, however, when I revisited the site today, the check marks were gone, and that too, a rush job it seems (the table edit will tell you that!).