JP miles 103 - Guide to booking partner airline award tickets using JP miles

This is the third in a series of posts forming part of the beginner's series, which has so far included posts on earning JP miles and redeeming JP miles. However, as I mentioned when I wrote about redeeming JP miles, redeeming JP miles for awards on partner airlines is a somewhat under-publicized and under-used manner of using JP miles, and so I intend to cover it in this post.

While Jet is part of Etihad Airways Partners, it also has 29 partner airlines (including some of the Etihad Airways Partners member airlines) with whom you can redeem JP miles. Also to clarify, only one of Jet Airway's code-share partners - Air Canada - is not a partner airline for redemption purposes. Here's the full list of partner airlines.

You cannot book award tickets on partner airlines online or over the phone. However, you can search for mileage requirements online, and after that, either continue with the online process or fill out a form and mail it to jpredemptions@jetairways.com. While the latter is relatively simple, the process after that will be identical whether you take the online route or the form-filling route. And since both those options involve the same basic searching, this guide will explain the process and identify deviations where necessary.

So here's how you go about redeeming JP miles for an award ticket on one of those partner airlines.

Login

To begin with, you'll need to log into your JP account either in www.jetairways.com. You need not have enough (or indeed, any) miles to do a search, but you definitely need to login to your JP account. Once you've done that, head over to the Jet Privilege section, and under that, the Partner Award option.

Search for your route and the miles required

That will lead you to the search screen, where you can identify your relevant date of travel, sector / route, travel class, and number of passengers. It gives you the option to provide three different dates of travel. Remember, this is only for one-way travel, and not a return trip.

For the purpose of this illustration, I've selected BOM-MEL as my sector, for on adult traveling in Economy class on 29 February 2016.

The date options don't affect the pricing of the award ticket, though for other reasons, it will become important. More on that later.

Search result

Once you click on Miles Required, the search result pops up, indicating the miles required for your selected route, class and date of travel.

That's 45,000 miles in our case, for one adult traveling economy class on BOM-MEL one way.

At this stage, you could Add Another Segment to your itinerary and do a further search, or if you're done searching, click on Continue. If you wanted to search for different awards as separate segments, that's fine. However the final ticketing will all be on the same PNR, to the extent possible and practical.

Adding passenger information

Once you hit Continue, you'll be provided space to input passenger information, and also the option to edit your own contact information. 

Or if you've chosen the option to mail them the form, then you can avoid this step, once you know the mileage requirements.

Booking the ticket

The online process ends with providing the passenger information on the online form or the completed PDF form over email. A simpler option would be to just email jpredemptions@jetairways.com with the names of passengers, proposed date of travel, sector and class of travel.

Jet Privilege folks will then respond - usually within a day or two - confirming the information you've provided (or asking for more information, in case of any gaps), and also indicating the possible itinerary with miles required. Where different itineraries are possible (different airlines, flight timings, connecting flights if any, etc), usually they indicate those as well. Surcharges and taxes are also indicated, and the former can vary vastly depending on which partner airline you use.

If flights are not available on your chosen dates of travel, they'll give you the option to either make a wait-listed award booking (miles are not deducted till the ticket is confirmed) or suggest a different date when the award is available.

However, if you've done your research separately, you could also make a suggestion to them, which they're usually happy to accept. During a recent booking on MAA-HKG, they first offered me MAA-BOM-HKG on Jet Airways itself, and MAA-KUL-HKG on Malaysia Airlines. However, I suggested MAA-HKG on Cathay Pacific as an option, adding that (a) Cathay was a partner airline and (b) it would be less of a hassle on a direct flight, and they accepted my suggestion.

Nothing stops you from evaluating different options as long as:

• all your segments are on Jet Airways partner airlines (even different partners for each segment), 
• there are no stopovers (connections are acceptable), and
• the routing is direct or as close to direct as possible (though there are exceptions).

One another recent occasion when I booked a partner award ticket, the routing was a little complicated, so the JP agent fixed up a time and rang me up to discuss the various options. 

Confirming your itinerary and payment

You will then finally be asked to confirm the itinerary, including sector, passenger names, travel dates, waitlisted or confirmed tickets, surcharges and taxes and class of travel, over email. You typically get about 2-3 days to do this, however if the award availability is limited, this time frame could be shorter.

Depending on the complexity of your award routing, the time period between your sending the initial request (email or online) and final confirmation could be anything between 3 and 15 days.

Once you've confirmed, you'll receive a call from a JP agent, verbally confirming your ticketing information. After this, you'll be taken through an IVR system to enter your credit card information and complete the payment for surcharges and taxes. 

Once you've finished your payment, the e-ticket is issued, and will be emailed to you - usually immediately or at best, within a couple of hours. You can also view it online, since the final confirmation they provide over email will also include a PNR reference. Here's an example from a recent booking.

Points to note

There are some points to keep in mind when booking an award ticket on partner airlines, using JP miles:

• The award has to be on a sector that Jet Airways doesn't fly on its own. However, a routing that has an alternate route on Jet Airways, is permissible. In my example above, SGN-AUH-MAA is an alternative to SGN-BOM-MAA which Jet Airways flies directly.
• The award booking should be completed at least 14 days before the date of travel. This applies to each sector of travel, and not just the first travel date. So if you've got a return leg a week after the onward leg, both segments should be booked at least 14 days before travel date. So give yourself plenty of time in advance of the travel date, for bookings.
• Surcharges can vary significantly by airline. For instance, Cathay Pacific charges far less in terms of surcharge, than say Etihad.
• Be prepared for multiple email interactions with JP agents. I've interacted with a few of them in the recent past, and found them generally to be quite helpful.
• Very little partner award inventory is available, so if your plans are final and award seats are available, book them!
• Most important - partner award are non-refundable. That means that if for any reason you cancel a previously booked partner award ticket, you will not be refunded the miles. You'll however receive a refund of any surcharges and taxes you've paid, in respect of the cancellation.

Conclusion

Jet Airways partner awards are a great way to use JP miles, and can be quite efficient with the number of miles required. However, do be careful of surcharges and taxes - if in doubt, you could do some research of your own using Matrix ITA software, or ask the JP agent themselves to provide different options so that you can compare the cash component involved before making the final booking. The most important part is the non-refund of miles in case of cancellations, so do not book partner award tickets unless your plans are absolutely certain, or you don't mind losing the points in case of cancellations!

I hope this guide was useful. Do write in with your comments and feedback, particularly if there are more topics that you think are useful for the beginner's guide.