alive_guy27

"Wondering what experiences people have had as Platinums with Jet....any specials on international flights?"...I primarily use Jet on US to India flights

Posted this at the Airline India forum and someone suggested I check here as well...any Plat's here who want to share their experiences?

avm2806

Well, Plat is a great tier especially within India.
On USA India flights the following official benefits:
1) 5 Upgrade Vouchers, which will come to you in the mail along with your kit - this is enough to get you a oneway upgrade USA-INDIA from eco to biz, or 5 domestic sectors within India.
2) Lounge access no matter class of travel (no diff from Gold)
3) Higher priority on Waitlist
4) Excess baggage - one piece on USA-INDIA flights (no diff from Silver or Gold).

Unofficially having a plat helps with Award seat confirmations, when you waitlist. Service on ground and on board is slightly better.
On Indian domestic tickets in eco, all change fees are waived as well as cancellation fees on refundable tickets - THIS IS ONLY ON Domestic fares within India - and as a resident here is the best feature of plat, which you wont really benefit much from.

Also if you fly BIZ you get 10% more cabin miles (1.6x instead of 1.5x) and you get a 30% tier bonus as well on miles.

aniruddh77

Well, I've got to give it to avm2806. But in my view (and sorry to break your bubble) if you compare the effort (and cost) of maintaining platinum with that of gold, the incremental plat benefits (except that you get 2 more upgrade vouchers and waiver of cancellation charges), it doesn't make it seem worth the while to keep plat. If I were you, i'll do my best to keep status and use the plat benefits as far as possible, but won't be too disappointed if i didn't retain status and fell to gold.

avm2806

I completely agree with Anirudh - I have just prioritized my BA Gold over 9W plat on upcoming US trip. In fact I just checked the 9W benefits chart, the only differences between plat and gold are
1) more miles - 10% more tier bonus and 10% more cabin bonus for CJZIP and 25% more cabin bonus for F,A
2) Waived cancellation on domestic fares
3) Waiver on 9W/Citibank platinum card annual fees.

Overall effort to maintain vs. benefits, the plat isn't worth it. Especially given that 2 of the 3 benefits over Gold are only beneficial to those residing in India.

Honestly the only reason I work on mainting is the Domestic cancellation option, which saves me a good US$1500-2000 a year.
Once KF joins oneworld I am ditching...

SuperFlyBoy

I totally agree.

AJLondon

+2.

Signed,
A just downgraded to 9W Gold after a couple of years as 9W Plat

Mr. Bean

I'm honestly a bit surprised with 9W and cancellation fees. This doesn't directly have anything to do with Plat status, but I recently was looking to purchase a fare DEL-KTM and noticed that the Y bucket was within a reasonable price range (what I considered, anyway), but just to be sure, I check the fare rules and even the Y bucket is not fully refundable. Here are the "gotchas"

1. Refund before departure = 1K INR fee (and it seems not even Plat status would get this waived, due to it being international)
2. Refund after departure = impossible
3. No show = 1K INR fee (gotta wonder why it even matters given #2)

So, even with Y bucket, I wouldn't be able to change my itinerary after departure (except dates, I guess). What's the point?

d3vski

Strange, as i find that fares ex-india are usually refundable minus a small fee usually around Rs1-2K. Perfectly acceptable considering the equivalent fares in europe or USA are use it or lose it.

A word of advice, if booking fares which have a no show penalty, try booking it from a travel agent rather than the airline website with your credit card because the slimey buggers will charge your card if you no show. You end up losing a ticket and paying for the pleasure of it.

midlevels

Some Jet elites I know have already dumped Jet for Kingfisher in anticipation of this.

Keyser

the biggest benefit of being plat is that you can use your vouchers to get an upgrade from even the lowest economy class booking....if you are gold, silver or blue then you have to first book a higher economy class & then only will you be eligable for an upgrade....

also, lounge access for plats is extended to one guest as well....this is not available for golds....

i have on a number of occasions received complimentary upgrades to première & once to first as well....all due to being a plat....

yesterday i was flying on jet konnect & they had business class seats on the first 4 rows....because i am plat my wife & i got the business class seats....

i have twice managed to book 2 first class redemption tickets when jet allows for only 1....again, due to being plat....

all these reasons make me want to achieve plat again & again....& i will definitely not be shifting to kingfisher just because they are joining one world....

rajeevpn

Sounds cool but not sure if you have to be a throughbred plat as opposed to a newbie plat for most of this @saad - on top of being a plat, i did see somewhere that you had a few MN miles- maybe that helped

Keyser

travelling a lot & having a good points balance does certainly help....but if you have achieved plat then you are doing a decent amount of travel so i don't think there would be too much difference between a new plat & an old plat with a few million miles....

d3vski

....but there would be, Jet are no mugs. They know that you have spent (im guessing) a couple hundred thousands dollars, pounds whatever your currency is and they will bend over backwards for you so that you carrying spending with them. Whereas someone who has just become a plat is not going to get the same treatment as you.

Keyser

like i said, it helps if you travel a lot & spend lots of money....but i know many other plats who don't travel as much as me & they get treated really well too....

SuperFlyBoy

You get a minuscule black tag for Plat - bizarre, really!

1/3rd the size of the old tags - although this time around they got the graphics/design right, but screwed up the tag overall - who wants to put something this small on their bags/suitcases? You can hardly see it!