What should I do? Business class BOM-LHR
Jet Airways
They've got a good product on the BOM-LHR route. There are also the options of taking either a day flight (midnight departure, reaches LHR early in the morning, timely for my meetings), or a midday departure (more waking hours on flight). I recall they had a chauffeur service - their website has it on this page, but I'm not sure if this is still offered. Flying Jet would net me some decent JP miles, and I'll also have an opportunity to upgrade to First class using my JP miles.But are JP miles really worth it, that's what I keep asking myself. Plus, if I do manage to snag an upgrade to First, then I'm out of the money on miles, for this flight. However, the prospect of adding at least 6 tier points to retain Platinum status, is quite tempting!
Emirates
Here's the product. I've not flown their A380 yet, so that's the reason this is one of my options. The other ones, of course, are their legendary F&B service, convenience of getting into LHR fairly early on the morning of my meetings, and the chauffeur driven car. I could also take the day flight connecting via DXB, so that I can enjoy more of the flight during my waking hours, but that would mean a fairly unproductive day.Flying Emirates also means I do get to earn some Skywards miles, but I don't do Emirates much, so I'm not sure how much use those miles will be to me.
British Airways
To be honest, I've never flown BA on this route. And I am not a big fan of Avios - I'd rather have my miles posted to Cathay Pacific / Asia Miles. But their class of service looks impressive. Plus the equipment they use on this route is fairly standard, so no excitement there. As with Jet and Emirates, there's also a day service, that I could use to sample the service. And it's a 777...been there before.Others
I do have other options, mainly Virgin. KLM/Air France won't be worth it since I don't get to use the Flying Blue program much in any case. Lufthansa - again, not a big attraction for me. Their business class service on this route is relatively fairly pedestrian (of course, that's only in comparison to other business class products!). Etihad - great airline but inconvenient departure timings.Conclusion
I don't have one, in this case. The fares are largely within an acceptable range, so there's not much use in looking at those. As regards the flights, let me summarise - Jet gives me the chance to upgrade to First, Emirates - the chance to sample their A380 offering on DXB-LHR, and BA - for the Asia Miles I can post to my CX account.What would you suggest or recommend?
HAHA, no. Anticlimax. That particular trip was cancelled, so the Emirates A380 remains elusive, unless I catch it at the HYD air show. However, interestingly, I would've had to fly LHR-DXB in first because of availability issues. That makes the cancellation even more sad and poignant !
ReplyDeleteOh man.. that sucks.. I have tried the Emirates Business once (DXB-CCU) and BA (BOM-LHR).. both are good products in there own ways.. My wife just did Jet BOM-BRU-EWR a few weeks ago and based on the pics she got, I think it was a great product..
ReplyDeleteHave been on the Emirates A380 and it's great.. not in business, but economy and that was good too.. More recently though I have been on the dreamliner, twice and to me it was better than the A380..
I've done BA and Jet. I find the Jet product clearly better, esp in Business class - I had a good run with them on BOM-LHR a few years ago - 8 visits in 2 years, and some of them were when they ran the 3x miles promotion!
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