Jet Airways booking engine sports a new look after Fare Choices. And I like it.

Let me begin my making it amply clear, it is the optics that I like, not Fare Choices itself, which Jet Airways announced a month ago and which took effect today. We at MAEM have written extensively about Fare Choices and its effects, and also provided you readers with our own JP benefits tool, to readily identify the benefits you'll be getting with Jet Airways, under Fare Choices.

Anyway, Fare Choices took effect today, and I wanted to see for myself the results of the changes they've made. Essentially, the Jet Airways booking engine has been reconfigured, and now shows each set of fare classes separately, and clearly states what benefits are available with each class of booking. That said, there is still some room for improvement, in my opinion. Here's my take.

Here's a sample of what you'll get to see hereon in, when you book on Jet Airways.

Search results

Once you've completed your search for a flight, you'll see something like this.

The column bars indicate the type of fare class (not the fare bucket or RBD as it is known in the trade, just the class type) - as Deal, Saver, Classic and Flex. The prices for each of these fare types, for each available flight, is shown in a matrix view.

Fare choices

Notice the "Fare Choices" button to the left of the various fare classes? Click on the drop down arrow, to view the benefits by fare type.

This the benefits available for each type of fare class.

Fare choices and benefits for your selection

Once you select your preferred fare class, there's a further display, reminding you of what the various benefits of that fare class are (or not!).

You can then elect to either carry on with your booking at the selected fare class, or upgrade to the next fare class (not service class, mind you).

Impressions

I must admit, that I quite like the presentation and visual aspects of Fare Choices, and particularly, how they are presented for specific fare options. I think it is a mix of ease of navigation, colours, and simplicity of information, that seems to work for me.

That said, and given how deeply Jet Airways is connected with Etihad, I'd have imagined them to provide a similar interface, such as the one below, when selecting specific fares.

The biggest advantage with this is that, while users can see the benefits available for the selected fare class, they can also see the benefits from other fare classes at the same time, without having to manually re-select another fare option. I think that would have added a bit of efficiency to Jet's approach.

The other thing that I think is not yet configured into the system are things which are dependent on elite status, like lounge access. I can understand these defaulting to the base case (Blue, I assume), when a user is not logged in. But when the user is logged in, it may make sense to show the benefits specific to the user's status. However, I can also see why Jet's current approach may be what it is - one reason could be because the booking engine cannot determine yet, whether the booking is being made for the member themselves or for another person.

Conclusion

The new reality of revenue-based mileage earning is clearly upon us, as far as Jet Airways is concerned. Overall, I do like the way they've presented it on the booking engine, though I think I speak on behalf of all Jet Airways loyalists, that we'd rather Fare Choices didn't happen at all.

Readers: What are your impressions about Jet Airways' Fare Choices, as well as the new look of the booking engine?