I had an Indian fare booked for me for MAA-BLR. During checkin, I presented my id, a US drivers license. I was prepared for some questions and possibly a charge for the differential between fares, but no such thing happened. Maybe being of Indian ethnicity helped, although I think the ground staff really is as embarassed about the dual pricing as the rest of us.

King Club mileage earning rates.....

Cabin Booking Class % MILES ACCRUAL
First Class
J 200%
C 200%
D 200%
I 200%
Z 0%

Kingfisher Class
Y 100%
K 100%
B 100%
U 500 miles
O 500 miles
M 100%
L 80%
Q 80%
W 80%
V 50%
S 50%
H 30%
R 30%
N 30%
T 0%(w.e.f. 09 Dec 06)
G 50%
X 0%
E 0%

Because of Indian govt regulations a carrier cannot fly international without having atleast 3 (or is it 5 ?) years of flying experience. I think Kingfisher is trying to circumvent this by starting a US based ariline and flying into India.

Jet already flies DEL,BOM,BAA-SIN and DEL,CCU-BKK (from Jan 23), and Sahara flies DEL-SIN,BKK, so SQ's got some decent competition already. And there's not necessarily all that much to improve: I've gotten 777ER's 4 out of 6 times on my recent SQ SIN-DEL flights, although it would be nice if they bumped this up to 100%...

Completely agree with Stephem. There isnt a better business class product in the Indian skies. After trying Kingfisher first a few trips ago, I make sure to fly IT everytime I visit India. Once my BLR-BOM flight was delayed due to air traffic congestion in BOM. As soon as we got into the IT-first bus transfer to the airport, they loaded all the luggage for IT-first passengers. As soon as we reached the terminal, there were ITfolks waiting with luggage carts, which they loaded and brought it outside right up to my car - I had never before been out of the airport that fast!! Certainly made me an IT-first fan.

The only sucky part is that the KingClub program requires segments to get to higher levels - not so great for ppl like me who visit India a couple of times and cannot make it to the 30+ segments. Oh well..

Nuff said, if you have been on Jet or Sahara you know that neither rival SQ or Kingfisher. I think SQ is the only decent plane in the sky between India and anything eastward. Regional Biz class in SE Asia sucks, the funny part is that MH, TG, Jet, etc all try to charge the same thing as SQ!

Kingfisher technically has to pass some more time flying domestically before anything east or west of mainland India is allowed to it; however, if any one of the newer airlines can pull off a move to get the clearance quicker, it would be Kingfisher that has the connections in India to pull it off.

Quick addition to the dual pricing discussion...

I flew 3 segments on Kingfisher in December. I booked and paid for the tickets from the US via their website, and seem to recall they explicitly state they do not have dual pricing for non residents. My tckets were certainly cheap enough (CCU-DEL for Rs. 3500!) to convince me I was paying the same as a resident Indian would.

It appears the dual pricing on Indian air carriers may be a thing of the past. See http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/a...how/402063.cms

Does Kingfisher still partner with Air Arabia? By linking up with LCC's and at the same time offering top notch service, I sometimes wonder what stategy they are following: LCC or NWA or full-service

6 segments on IT in the last 2 weeks - very good inflight experiences. ^

Baggage delivery at BOM however was very slow every time.

This is where 9w shines... ^

Unusual KingFisher status match...

http://www.flykingfisher.com/megamilemove

Just submit your mileage statement from any Indian domestic frequent flyer programme showing an accrual of 100000 miles in one or more of your frequent flyer accounts. You will be enrolled into the King Club programme ( if you are not already a member ); at a tier that matches the one you hold on your other domestic Indian frequent flyer Programme.

Fly Kingfisher Airlines, earn upto 100000 Miles* and enjoy a host of rewards and benefits including free tickets faster! All this, over and above your regular King Miles earned on all those flights.

Call 022 6646 9999 today to register for the Mega Mile Move offer.
Registration is open till April 30, 2007

100K miles flying shorthaul domestic? Even something like MAA-DEL is just a thousand miles. It is not an easy target even for regular domestic flyers - and a lot of them bargain shop, get deep discount fares that dont earn miles on IC/9W etc ..

If it were 100k miles from any source including say credit card spending, then I'd see it as something meaningful for more people. I did notice that if a pax does 60k in Jet Airways and 40k in IC, then said pax can take advantage of this too.

As it is, Kingfisher I like. That noted, I generally find the food on Jet Airways better (at least in coach) and I think Jet Airways seems to more often have more efficient baggage handling on arrival at a good number of airports than Kingfisher.

That's most of what I have... (cc miles) as I usually buy the lowest mileage fares! (used to be H class, now all of them give some sort of mileage, including *sector count*)

Yup, agreed, although even Jet's food can get quite unreasonable sometimes!

Baggage: Nobody beats Jet's service... (in India, that is...and an overall comparision between carriers...)

One time I had flown BOM-MAA-IXM (2 seperate flights), and the agent/s never bothered to put the "priority" tags on, so each time my luggage came out *last*! However, one guy at IXM stated to the duty manager there that nowhere in the world does he get his bags faster than he arrives at the terminal/baggage carousel (small airport, btw), and he was very happy...I had to inform him about Changi, and this usually happens when flying with SQ!