Jet flights bookable on PremierMiles website?

Earlier this evening, reader Aditya drew my attention to what seemed like an error - Jet Airways flights showing as bookable on www.premiermiles.co.in, which is Citibank's exclusive travel booking portal for Citi PM cardholders. I think he was searching for tickets to Ho Chi Minh City (SGN), and stumbled upon it.

It is public knowledge that there's no love lost between Citibank and Jet Airways after their partnership with a co-branded card ended over two years ago. Since then, Citibank generally hasn't allowed direct bookings on Jet Airways on the Premier Miles website, either for cash or PM redemptions (although they do have a slightly roundabout way to redeem premier miles, after making a cash booking in the first place).



So it is indeed surprising that Jet flights would be bookable on the PM website. So I decided to check it out. Sure enough, it was there for the DEL-SGN route that Jet Airways will start operating effective 5 November 2014.


What's more, there was also a direct miles redemption option for the DEL-SGN sector.


I was wondering if this might be unique, being a new route, but it turns out that there are other sectors also available for booking. For instance, here's DEL-JFK for cash...


...and for miles.


In fact, this extends to international flights on the Etihad network, via AUH, that are codeshared as 9W flights. Interestingly, the availability is restricted to international routes and not domestic ones within India. 

Here's what I think is going on. Citi and Jet remain divorced, but only in India. However, in the UAE, even though Citi and Etihad haven't got an active partnership going, there are some crossover benefits between the two. Therefore, I'm inclined to believe that there's a bit of Etihad's involvement that has resulted in Citi PM now having access to and showing ticket availability on Jet Airways' international flights. I'm even more convinced of this, when I see that I can book an international flight on 9W, but I cannot book an itinerary that has a domestic leg of a trip on 9W (eg, MAA-BOM-JNB).

Nonetheless, this is good news for those who want to book 9W flights on the PM website (and earn bonus PMs!). The direct redemption isn't really a significant additional benefit since the indirect route was always available, but it does save some time and effort.

Unless all of this is just a system error that'll get corrected in the next 12 hours or so?


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