50% off on award bookings with Etihad and Gulf Air - limited time offer

Etihad and Gulf Air are currently offering promotions for a 50% discount on award tickets. There are specific conditions attached (naturally!), but even so, the ability to snag award tickets at the discounted mileage requirements means exceptional value for those miles.

Etihad

With the Etihad Guest program, the 50% discount is applicable on all online bookings, where a guest seat is involved. Guest seats are those seats that are fully payable using miles (plus applicable taxes, etc) assigned by Etihad exclusively for award redemptions, which are available to both Etihad Guest members as well as partner airline members. The discount is not applicable to other award seats, as also miles plus cash options. However, Guest seats are available for both economy and business class.

Bookings are to be done online, and completed before 8 April 2016, using the promo code GETAWAY50. It is valid for travel between 7 May 2016 and 26 December 2016 (blackout period 21 July 2016 to 18 September 2016). The offer is valid only for direct routes, and not for stopovers or multi-destination bookings.

Bookings under this offer are non-refundable.

A reader pointed out that this promotion code was not working. However, that seems to be an individual-specific issue. For instance, here's what I got when I checked for MAA-AUH for random dates during the promotion's validity:

Gulf Air

With Gulf Air's Falcon Flyer program, you can get the 50% discount when redeeming Falconflyer miles online at gulfair.com booking engine, via your local Gulf Air office or by calling their Worldwide Contact Centre. The applicable mileage rates are:

Zone 1 covers: Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Baghdad, Dammam, Doha, Dubai, Jeddah, Kuwait, Medina, Muscat, Najaf, Riyadh, Gassim, Amman, Beirut, Cairo, Khartoum and Sanaa

Zone 2 covers: Athens, Istanbul, Larnaca, Chennai(Madras), Delhi, Hyderabad, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Sialkot, Multan, Faisalabad, Kochi, Mumbai, Thiruvananthapura and Addis Ababa.

Zone 3 covers: Frankfurt, London, Paris, Moscow, Bangkok and Manila.

This offer is valid for travel that is completed by 30 June 2016, in both economy and business class. The 50% discount is not valid for redemption of miles to upgrade your class of service. The offer is valid only if redemption classes (T,P) are available.

Conclusion

While both Etihad and Gulf Air offer the same discount of 50% on award tickets, each comes with its own sets of pros and cons. Gulf Air has a rather limited list of destinations it operates flights to, compared to Etihad's network. Gulf Air also charges fuel surcharges on many of its routes, which is not quite what Etihad does. However, Etihad's availability and booking timeline under this offer are restricted (Guest seats only) and limited (bookings till 8 April 2016), whereas Gulf Air is a bit more liberal (30 June 2016), although going by the travel dates permitted, Etihad wins!

At the end of the day, of course, it all comes down to the program in which you've got miles to redeem! And both are great offers.

Readers: Do you have any plans to use these 50% discounted offers? Do tell us your success stories, and we'll be happy to publish them!