Planning a well-deserved getaway trip and trying to find the
cheapest day to buy airline tickets can turn into a costly and frustrating game
of hit and miss, for even the most experienced of travellers.
There are also important factors to consider that determine
the best day of the week to buy flights. Your destination, when you plan to
travel and whether you are booking a domestic or international flight!
So is there a magic number to consider when locating the
prime booking window to buy tickets for your dream trip?
There are 3 things you need to look into:
How Far in Advance Should You Book a Domestic Flight?
Flying within the country? That’s good news in terms of how
much time you’ll have to buy tickets.
When you’re booking a domestic flight, book your tickets
between one and three months prior to your trip.
According to Travel & Leisure, Kayak compiled one year
of flight data and discovered the following:
“Six months before departure, domestic ticket prices were
about 20 percent higher than the lowest fares. They started dropping three
months out and hit a low to seven weeks before departure”
It’s important to remember that these numbers aren’t written
in stone, but rather, are to be used as a guideline on what to consider when
searching for the most affordable booking window.
Whatever you do, don’t wait until the last week because on
an average, prices shoot up by 25 percent.
When Is The Best Time To Buy International Flight Tickets?
It takes a lot more preparation to plan an international
trip, and that includes booking your tickets further in advance.
International flights don’t see the same kind of fluctuation
domestic flights do, so more often than not what you see is what you’re going
to get.
According to “CheapAir”, international flights stay fairly
flat for a few months, then start to creep up slowly, until about 90 days
before departure when the place of increase starts to accelerate.
“FareCompare” says that the cheapest days to fly
international are between five and a half months and one and a half months from
departure.
Put simply, three months out is when you want to start
thinking of booking domestic flights – whereas for booking international
flights, three months out is the last minute you want to be thinking of
booking.
Have more than 3-5 months to book tickets for international flights to ensure that you’re getting the best deal possible.
When to Book Flights to Popular Destinations & Times?
Airline ticket sales operate on complex formulas, but one
thing that remains fairly simple is the concept of supply and demand.
When there is less supply, there will be more demand.
Understandably, when there is more demand, there will be higher prices.
What that means for your travel plans is that you’ll want to
book early when traveling to popular destinations and during peak times.
Going to the beach or to Europe this summer, when everyone
else is doing the same thing? Book early!
*To ensure you get the most affordable flight deal, don’t
forget to compare flight fares from different airlines, so you can ascertain
the best airline to get the cheapest deal.
Scoot, the low-cost arm of the Singapore Airlines Group, has
announced plans to strengthen its presence in India with flights to three new
cities, including Coimbatore, Trivandrum and Visakhapatnam.
Scoot, launched in June 2012 and merged with Tigerair Singapore
in July 2017, retaining the Scoot brand, currently operates on seven routes
between Amritsar, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Lucknow, and
Tiruchirappalli in India.
The new routes are due to be transferred over from sister
airline, SilkAir, and Scoot will be the only airline operating direct non-stop
flights from Thiruvananthapuram and Visakhapatnam to Singapore.
Flights from Trivandrum to Singapore will commence from 7
May 2019, and flights from Coimbatore and Visakhapatnam will start from 27 October
2019.
The airline has announced a limited-time sale on flights
from all its India points – including Trivandrum, Coimbatore and Visakhapatnam ,starting
from 14th – 28th January 2019 on its website.
One-way promotional fares (inclusive of tax) begin from as
low as Rs4,500 for economy, for trips to 27 cities in Australia, Indonesia,
Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam via Singapore.
Scoot’s network presently encompasses 66 destinations across
18 countries and territories, with 16 more destinations from Laos, India,
China, Malaysia and Indonesia to join the network by the second half of 2020.
Global airlines are looking to enter India, lured by the by
a domestic travel boom and what’s expected to be the world’s third-biggest
aviation market by 2025.
Yet India has proven to be a highly competitive market, where
profits are scarce and the life expectancy of weaker airlines is anything but
certain.
The best example of this is the recent fall of Jet Airways. Jet
Airways India Ltd, one of the first carriers to launch after the market opened
up in the early 1990s, is struggling to handle the cost of its day to day
operations and are in dire need of liquid cash.
This is the sign of financial distress in a market which struggles
with high fuel prices, airfare wars and a depreciating rupee. The competition
is set to intensify if Qatar Airways follows through with its proposal to start
a short-haul flights in the country.
To give you a small insight into why this is happing , we
did some digging around and found some interesting points.
Running The Rat Race
The Indian aviation sector is slowly heading towards
reaching a scenario similar to the telecom sector, which faced immense
disruption since the data pricing war started.
At present, airlines regularly offer major discounts and
cashback offers on flights as they want to ‘snatch’ more passengers from the
railways & their competitors to fill up more spots.
Many aviation experts say that the major problem facing the
sector is a “low-cost” airfare war that is driving ticket prices
unrealistically low, even to such an extent that airlines cannot cover their
operating costs.
The woes faced by Jet Airways are similar to those faced by
other Indian carriers that are struggling to remain profitable. This is despite
filling nearly 90 percent of their seats and recording a sharp increase in
domestic passenger numbers over the last four years.
Although the higher demand in the sector reflects as growth,
it does not necessarily add up to profitability in terms of revenue generation.
Experts have termed the growth in the airline sector as “unhealthy” and even
profitless.
The Real Killer
With the entry of budget carriers such as IndiGo and
SpiceJet since the mid-2000’s, full-service carriers like Jet Airways & Air
India that have higher overhead costs, such as in-flight meals and
entertainment, have been forced to offer discounts to passengers looking for a
great bargain.
For instance, in 2015, SpiceJet offered base fares of as low
as Rs 65. Average ticket prices for New Delhi to Mumbai, the world’s
third-busiest route, fell 15 percent to 3,334 rupees in July-August 2014.
“Such fares are “not sustainable,” yet there’s “no choice”
but to keep offering them” Rahul Bhatia, the billionaire co-founder of
InterGlobe Aviation Ltd. that operates IndiGo, told analysts after almost all
of its quarterly profits were wiped out.
To Robert Mann, the New York-based head of aviation
consultancy R.W. Mann & Co., the Indian market now resembles that of the
U.S. 30 years ago after the government freed ticket prices from federal
controls in 1978, setting off a fare war.
According to Mt Jagat Puri who’s a pilot by profession, “Ticket
prices on key and popular routes are always under sustained pressure from
various carriers”. He went on to say that, some of the prices are unreasonable
and this leads to an unhealthy fare war.
India’s airlines have particularly suffered because passengers are highly price-sensitive despite spiralling jet-fuel prices and high local taxes that reach as much as 30 percent.
India Flying At A Loss
The Indian government also has had to prop up its
loss-making national carrier Air India, pouring in taxpayer money to keep
planes in the air. In July 2018, the government pumped in €261 Million to keep
Air India operating.
Air India has found itself in dire financial straits over
the past decade, saddled by a gigantic debt amounting to around €7 billion and
having to beg the government for bailouts.
But while the government is looking at infusing fresh
capital in Air India, the private airlines need to fight for themselves in a hostile
market.
What Is The Solution?
With margins slipping, fuel prices not showing any signs of
coming down and little likelihood of the government lowering taxation on jet
fuel, the only option with airlines is to raise fares.
While airlines are now introducing measures to curb
passengers from increasing flight load (recent baggage rule change), much more
needs to be done to make the sector profitable again.
Other than that, industry veterans such as Kapoor feel there
is a need to focus on real growth, which can only be achieved by matching
global costs and not trying to compete with the Indian Railways.
However, it would be extremely hard for airlines to move
away from the low-cost model as passengers may again go back to travelling on
trains. This is where the airline industry lacks the pricing power and is
forced to offer low prices.
Conclusion
There is little that can be done to change the fortunes of
the sector which is facing increased stress due to rising ATF prices and
pressure from depreciating rupee.
Considering that Indian airline carriers pay the highest for
ATF due to local taxes to the tune of 30 per cent, the only intelligent move is
to increase ticket prices and aim at real growth rather than a boost triggered
by discounts.
If you’re a nervous traveller, you’ll be interested to know
that Qantas is the safest airline in the world, according to a new list from
AirlineRatings.com.
The Australian airline has nabbed the top spot on the annual
list since 2014, although technically it was a joint winner in 2018. United
Airlines is back on the list after the ranking left it out it last year.
AirlineRatings.com put together its list by sourcing data
from 405 airlines, looking at points like government audits, crash and serious
incident records, and profitability.
While Qantas has the top spot, Finnair and Hawaiian are not
far behind.
Here is the list of the top 20 safest airlines in
alphabetical order (which is how AirlineRatings.com presents the list):
Air New Zealand
Alaska Airlines
All Nippon Airways
American Airlines
Austrian Airlines
British Airways
Cathay Pacific Airways
Emirates
EVA Air
Finnair
Hawaiian Airlines
KLM
Lufthansa
Qantas
Qatar Airways
SAS
Singapore Airlines
Swiss
United Airlines
Virgin Atlantic
Virgin Australia
The Most Punctual Airline In The World
Panama’s Copa Airlines SA has been crowned 2018’s most
punctual carrier in a global survey.
Latvia’s Air Baltic ranked second among airlines arriving or
departing within 15 minutes of scheduled times, according to a report by data
firm OAG Aviation Worldwide Ltd.
Hong Kong Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines and Bangkok Airways
rounded out the top five. IndiGo & Air Asia India have come in the Top 20
as well.
About 4.3 billion passengers traveled by air last year, 6.1
percent more than in 2017, according to a preliminary report by the United
Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization. Airlines filled a record
81.9 percent of their seats in 2018.
Here’s The List Of The Most Punctual Airlines in the world
in 2019
Low-Cost Carriers IndiGo & Air Asia India are the only 2
Indian Airlines to make it to the top 20 most punctual airlines in the world in
2018.
Among airports, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Bhubaneshwar
feature in the top 20 list of the most punctual airports across the globe.
The report published by OAG Punctuality League ,a UK-based
air travel intelligence firm, analysed 58 million flight records in 2018 to
create a ranking of the best on-time performance (OTP) for the world’s largest
airlines and airports.
On-Time Performance (OTP) is the percentage of flights that
depart or arrive within 15 minutes of schedule. Airports handling at least 25
lakh passengers have been ranked according to their punctuality.
IndiGo, India’s largest airline by passengers carried and
fleet size, was ranked at number six under ‘Mega Airline’ list and at number
seven in ‘Low-Cost Carrier’ list for punctuality. It also took the tenth spot
in Asia Pacific region for best punctuality.
AirAsia India was ranked at number 12 in low-cost carrier
list for punctuality.
Under large airports with best punctual or on-time
performance, Hyderabad and Bengaluru airports took the number 13 and 16 spots
respectively. Airports with 10-20 million passengers in a year were identified
in this category.
Bhubaneshwar Airport also secured a place at number 20 in
the small airport list with annual passenger traffic of 2.5 to 5 million.
Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport was ranked
at 13 in the list of mega airports for punctuality, which has over 30 million
passengers departing every year. It is currently the seventh busiest airports
in Asia and among the top 20 busiest airports in the world.
A mid-air new year celebration party has landed SpiceJet into
trouble with Indian aviation regulators Directorate General Of Civil
Aviation(DGCA).
On December 31 last year, the private airline decided to
celebrate the arrival of 2019 onboard. The crew wore colourful wigs and carried
pompoms while greeting passengers in their seats.
What irked the DGCA was a video on social media that showed
passengers dancing on board a mid-air flight. The regulator has summoned the
airline officials seeking an explanation.
Here are the details of the incident:
The video was taken inside flight SG 282 flying
from Amritsar to Goa.
In the video, it is seen that while the aircraft
was mid-air, many passengers were moving around the aisle dancing, clicking
photos, and even posing with the cabin crew.
According to DGCA this is a violation of
cabin-safety requirements. Use of cell phones to take pictures mid-air is also
a violation of safety rules.
The regulator is probing whether crew members joined in the
celebration and if it was an incident inside only one aircraft. However, SpiceJet
said no protocols were violated and the airline crew did not participate in the
dancing.
According to SpiceJet, On one specific flight, after
completion of service and prior to the seat belt sign coming, they got some of their
cabin crew members to greet passengers while walking down the aisle.
“The people seen dancing were passengers who got momentarily
carried away. The crew immediately requested the passengers to be seated. The
captain also put on the seat belt sign and appropriate announcements were made.”
This is not the first time that the regulator has taken a
strict stance against a mid-air bash inside an aircraft.
In 2014, the DGCA had sent a show-cause notice to SpiceJet
for holding a 10-minute dance show inside an aircraft. In 2016, the regulator
had also grounded the crew of Jet Airways after singer Sonu Nigam was allowed
to perform mid-air over the public announcement device inside an aircraft.
Mid-air bashes, however, are common as airlines regularly
use them to attract flyers and improve their brand image. Airlines such as
Finnair and AirAsia have conducted dance and birthday celebrations onboard
their flights.
Travelling frequently by air can get expensive, but most flyers
will agree to the fact that air travel is still the fastest and convenient way
of reaching your destination.
But how do you get around those expensive flight tickets and
keep your travel within your budget?
Well, the answer to this question is “Frequent Flyer Programs”!
Signing up to a frequent flyer programme is one of the most important steps to spending a lot less on travelling by air and ensuring a much better flight & airline experience.
It’s such an unbelievably simple way of saving money on
flying, yet many of us don’t use it at all.
But that’s why we’re here!
To help you save whenever you fly, let us give you brief understanding of what exactly is a frequent flyer program and how does it work.
What Is A Frequent Flyer Program?
A Frequent Flyer Program (FFP) is a promotional offer given by an airline to win the loyalty of its guests by offering certain rewards to them.
The programme involves the guest accumulating frequent flyer
miles or airline miles by travelling with the airline.
These miles can then be used to make the most of rewards
offered by the airline such as free flights, seat upgrades, priority check-ins
and lounge access. These rewards apply to both domestic and international flights.
History Of Frequent Flyer Programs
When the concept of FFP started, airlines gave frequent
flyer miles or points to the guest for the number of miles or distance they flew with them. Basically, the
points given were roughly the same as the miles a customer flew.
However, overtime this concept changed.
In recent times, while the distance travelled doesn’t earn
you as much points as it used to, travel miles can now be earned in a lot more
ways than just flying.
Things like booking a ticket on the airline’s website,
subscribing to their magazines and booking through a partner airline credit
card can earn you frequent flyer miles.
What Are The Benefits Of Frequent Flyer Miles
1.Elite Membership
As you accumulate more points, the airline tends to upgrade
you to a platinum or a gold memberships.
Every airline has its stipulated amount of miles to be
accumulated before you can be invited to an elite member program.
The elite membership in FFP’s give you some eye catching
perks like lounge access, priority check-in & boarding, occasional free
ticket upgrade, priority baggage handling and more.
2.Seat Upgrades
You can use you airline miles to upgrade your seat from
economy class to premium class or premium class to business class depending on
what is available with the airline.
3.Trade Miles For Experiences
Some International airlines allow you to exchange earned
miles for vacations, festivals, sporting events, and more.
Tickets to a football game, a seven-day cruise , 5 star
hotel stay and tickets to an arts & music festival are just some of the
packages you can exchange for your airline miles.
4. Travel With Partner Airlines
Frequent flyer miles can come in handy when you’re flying
with a partner airline or if your airline is part of an alliance.
For instance, Air India is part of the Star Alliance which
has International carriers such as Lufthansa, United Airlines & Singapore
Airlines.
You can use your Air India miles to redeem rewards if you’re
flying with its star alliance partner airlines.
Registering For A Frequent Flyer Program
There are 2 ways in which you can register for a Frequent
Flyer Program:
Airline Program
Registering for a FFP is very easy. You just have to go to
your airline’s website and create an account with them. Once you sign up , you
will get a frequent flyer number and they will also send you a frequent flyer
card.
Airline Credit Card
Airlines partner with banks to help each other benefit from their customers, so check if your credit card bank has a tie-up with an airline
If you want to stack up your flyers miles, then use your credit card wherever you can. Put away the cash and debit card. Use mileage-accruing credit cards for everything from bills to everyday items like shampoo.
For instance, Axis bank credit card holders can be a part of the “Axis Vistara Infinite” FFP. This progra gives up to 4 Vistara Business Class vouchers (1+3) based on your credit card expenditure.
Using Frequent Flyer Miles
Onece you get your Frequent Flyer Number, all you need to do is use it while booking your flight.
It will be used automatically if you’re booking through the airline’s website and points will be added to your profile.
If you book through websites like GoIbibo or MakeMyTrip, you can add this while you are booking the ticket.
In case, you forget to use the number while booking a flight, you can always let the staff at the airport counter know while check-in and he/ she will be add it to your journey. Typically your boarding pass will have this number printed.
If you forget to use the number all together for a journey, you can always claim your miles after 3 to 6 months for that trip.Howvere, you’ll need to retain your boarding pass for it.
These are the best frequent flyer programs in India
1.Jet Privilege By Jet Airways
Jet Privilege is an award winning airline loyalty program
and is useful for both international and domestic travel.
Rewards are very easy to redeem in this program, plus you
can earn “JP Miles” by flying internationally with Jet Airways partner airlines
like Etihad.
The Jet Privilege loyalty membership is a 5 tier program.
The journey begins as a Jet Privilege Blue member and progresses through Blue
Plus, Silver, Gold and finally to a Jet Privilege Platinum member.
2.Club Vistara By Vistara
Club Vistara claims to be the fastest rewarding Frequent
Flyer Program in all of India and “tailored for the trendsetters and the high
boardroom fliers” as stated in its official website.
However, the airline is relatively new and flies to a
limited number of destinations. Plus it has only 2 partner airlines, which are Singapore
Airlines and Silk Air.
Club Vistara operates a four tier Frequent flyer program
which are – CV Base, CV Silver, CV Gold and CV Platinum. The more you fly with
them the faster you’ll progress from basic CV Base membership to a CV Platinum
Membership.
3.Flying Returns By Air India
Flying Returns was India’s first frequent flyer program.
The biggest advantage of being a Flying First member is that
you can redeem and get rewards for you points across many international airlines
, since Air India is part of the Star Alliance.
Flying Returns has premium membership with some very amazing
perks. The program has three tiers, the Maharaja Club – as the elite tier, The
Golden Edge Club and the Silver Edge Club.
People will soon be able to make calls and access internet through their phones during air travel within Indian territory as the government has notified rules for providing such services.
The government has made a set of guidelines under the Indian Flight and Maritime Connectivity Rules (IFMC), 2018, which says that Indian and foreign airlines operating in the country can provide in-flight voice and data services in partnership with a valid Indian telecom licence holder.
The services will be activated once the aircraft attains a minimum height of 3,000 metres in Indian airspace to avoid interference with terrestrial mobile networks, the rules state.
The IFMC licences will be granted against an annual fee of Re 1 for a period of 10 years and the permit holder will have to pay licence fees and usage charges based on revenue earned from providing services.
However, airlines and service providers will decide how much they want to charge the customer. It is also up to them whether they want to offer both internet and calling services or limit themselves to Wi-Fi services only.
Most airlines globally offer only Wi-Fi on board as allowing mobile calls could be too much of a nuisance for fellow travellers.
This development helps India, one of the fastest growing aviation markets and the second largest smartphone market, join a long list of countries like the US, UK, Canada and China that have been offering the services for a couple of years now.
