Big changes to Jet Privilege program

Jet Privilege has made some more rather large changes to the JP program, after a slew of changes they made in July/August 2014 and October 2014. A quick read of these suggests that it isn't all bad news - there are some great positives as well.

No convenience fees for online award bookings

Let's be clear on this. No convenience fees on online award bookings. Jet charges a convenience fee (on domestic tickets, this is Rs 105 per person on the ticket). If you book your award tickets online directly (and not through the call center, IVR, etc), then this charge is waived. That sounds natural. Though Rs 105 isn't much, it is something, and on a matter of principle, I'm glad they're waiving it. Because there's no additional service (that can be called a convenience) that Jet is providing passengers for the benefit of booking award tickets online.

This applies from today, 3 February 2015.

Miles upgrade streamlined

There's something called RBD (Reservation Booking Designator), which is also commonly known as the fare class. Earlier, the number of miles required for upgrading a ticket was (a) a standard number irrespective of your original booking class or RBD, (b) inconsistent across sectors. Also, you could upgrade on miles only if you had a K class (or RBD) fare ticket or higher. Not all sectors offered business class seats. And finally, your JP status didn't matter.

All of that's changed, particularly with Jet now offering business class seats on virtually all of its flights. So here are the changes for upgrading from economy to business class:

• miles upgrade can be done irrespective of your booking class, ie, all booking classes now eligible for upgrade - I think this is the best part of this shake-up!
• miles requirement streamlined at 1.2 times the cost of an economy award ticket, in the case of low RBD (fare class), defined as V, H, O, W and B
• miles requirement streamlined at 1.1 times the cost of an economy award ticket, for all other RBD (fare classes)
• for JP Platinum members, 1.1 times the cost of an economy award ticket will always be the miles requirement, irrespective of fare class (or RBD)

(Earlier, upgrades used to cost in the region of 1.25 times the number of miles required for an economy award ticket.)

You can find the earn, base redemption and upgrade mileage requirements here. This makes upgrades consistent with the basic rewards redemptions that they made changes to (mostly positive) in the second half of 2014.

I believe this to be F.A.N.T.A.S.T.I.C !!! 

These changes are effective for upgrades on travel on or after 1 March 2015.

No more cash upgrades

One of the sweetest spots in the JP program was the cash upgrades, where you paid Rs 2,000 or Rs 1,000 (depending on the origin city) to upgrade yourself to business class when flying on an economy award booking. That's gone now, and I can see why, given the other positives they've changed. 

To my mind, this is the sorest point of the current set of changes. 

These changes are effective for upgrades on travel on or after 1 March 2015. Which means if you have any award tickets coming up and you'd like to max out on the Rs 1k / Rs 2k upgrade, you have just under 4 weeks to do that (presuming you have or will have an economy award ticket first!).

Changes to JP miles earnings on US Airways flights

I'm not an expert on this, so I'll defer to my betters on this one. But the upshot of this is a reduced JP miles earnings benefit when you fly on US Airways' network. Here's the revised mileage accrual information.

These changes are effective already, ie from 1 February 2015.

Conclusion

Overall, the positiveness quotient here is 2/4. Two great changes, one sore point (but expected, as I've explained above), and the US Airways bit. Overall, I'm not too unhappy - it could've been worse!