DEL-AMD or DEL-BDQ on miles?
 

hello all, im looking to get a flight from DEL to either AMD or BDQ. curious as to which airline miles (oneworld, star alliance etc.) can be used to redeem for a ticket? thanks!

None of the Indian airlines are currently members of any airline alliances, so knowing that your airlines are in oneworld/star doesn't really help. I think AI (and thus IC?) is supposed to join Star in March... don't really know how award tickets will be.

If you have AA miles, they'll let you book a domestic 9W (Jet Airways) ticket for 20K miles according to their award chart, plus I think a $20 phone ticketing fee. I've never tried this and have no idea how availability is.

It seems UA will give you a 9W ticket for 35k miles, probably with a $25 ticketing fee?

I think NW gives you award tickets on 9W or IT (Kingfisher). CO lets you earn on IT but not redeem, AFAIK.

Seriously, though, paid tickets are like $130 return; is that really worth burning 20,000 miles on? You can get far better deals for your miles.

thanks for the info, hugely helpful. tickets for the dates im looking are more like $260 than $130 but you are right, it isnt the best deal for miles. the thing is, im mainly an AA flyer but i have some orphan miles on other airlines so i figured i would see if my DL, UA or CO orphan miles could be used. again, thanks, this was exactly what i was looking for....

is Jet Airways the only airline that serves DEL-BDQ and DEL-AMD non-stop?

ic (air india - old indian airlines) also serves non-stop on these routes

From what I can see, the following airlines fly DEL-AMD direct:
Go Air
Indian (1 stop)
IndiGo
Jet Airways / Jet Lite
Kingfisher
SpiceJet

DEL-BDQ:
Indian
IndiGo
Jet Airways (ATR72)

i tried looking on orbitz and all i found was jet airways. perhaps it is the dates since i am looking right near xmas and new years? i will check the individual airline pages. thanks!

Try using an Indian airline booking website. I know of 2. www.yatra.com and http://cleartrip.com. There should be more.

Cleartrip is excellent and professionally run. Very responsive too. They take international cards.

Oher than yatra.com there are - www.makemytrip.com, www.ezeego1.co.in etc

There's also a kayak.com clone called www.ixigo.com - that'll search for fares and then redirect you to the airline's website where you can book. They mark those airlines that take international credit cards (several dont because of the risk of card fraud) with a dollar sign next to the airline (in a box to the left of the screen).

these sites are all hugely helpful. i have managed to get my roundtrip cost down to about half of what it was before. i will do a search but while im here, how are spice jet and indigo?

spicejet & indigo are both lccs, food for purchase, brand new planes (737s and 320s respectively).

any charge for baggage? how are time and baggage handling reliability?

http://www.spicejet.com/tnc.asp says 1 piece of cabin baggage under 10 kilos, and upto 20 kilos of luggage checked in, any more than that and you pay excess baggage - but that's still going to be cheap for short haul flights on an LCC, especially when the INR is weak against the dollar (48 to 49 INR against a USD now .. it was just over 40 some months back).

That's about the same baggage allowance the full service domestic carriers (IC, spicejet etc) offer you.

Note - if your flight is operated by an ATR, that's got tiny luggage racks so that you can't fit in stuff that's much bigger than a laptop case or small piece of soft luggage into the racks. You'd have to check most rollaboards in (even those that fit into the racks of a 737)

General questions about intra India awards
 

I need to get my wife a ticket or 2 to accompany me in business/first for some intra-India flights. They are looking pretty pricey from a cash standpoint, so I'd like to explore using miles for her tickets. Am I correct that my options are for business class awards are:

NW- IT or 9W: 50k miles
AA- 9W: 35k miles
UA- 9W: 50k

Is that it?

I dont really see 9W as worth 50k from either my UA or NW account, IT is probably a bit excessive at 50k but more worth it than 9W. The 35k with AA miles on 9W seems like the best deal overall.

Also, not an offer, but a question on mileage values and redemption levels for IT and 9W FF programs... could I potentially get a better value by trading for 9W or IT miles in the coupon connection? Again, for all I know those programs have equally high redemption levels and/or miles are slow to accrue.

Any insight?

Eh? Did you try the local portals suggested upthread? Cleartrip etc?

Those tix arent worth 50k miles, not for flights under 3 hours in length