AirAsia X to shift base from Melbourne to Avalon airport (Australia)

AirAsia has announced that it will stop flying to Tullamarine airport, Melbourne, Australia (Airport code MEL) from late 2018 and will shift operations to nearby Avalon airport (Airport code AVV, 70 kms away from city) [News]

AirAsia customers traveling to Australia please take note of this change. Air Asia is currently flying to Melbourne international airport, which was fairly close to city and well connected by airport bus.

Reason: Obvious reason seem to be cost cutting. Avalon is lot cheaper airport to operate from.

Above- Melbourne Central Shot tower

From when?: It is not clear from what exact date flights will operate from Avalon. As of now AirAsia website is accepting bookings to MEL only and AVV is not listed as a destination. AVV airport is operational and it doesn't take really long time to shift operations- my guess is Air Asia X will use Melbourne till their current contract expires.

The positive impact for passengers:

1. Avalon is cheaper and we hope Air Asia will pass on part of the savings to customers by means of lower ticket price.

2. Flights to other cities in Australia is also cheaper from Avalon. For example, Avalon -Sydney flight on Jet Star is easily 20-30% cheaper than Melbourne-Sydney flight.

3. Great ocean road is closer to Avalon. Tourists can probably spend a day exploring great ocean road and then head to Melbourne city

Negative Impact

1. Avalon being far away from Melbourne city compared to Tullamarine, expect more travel time (1 hour+) and money to reach Melbourne CBD (Central Business District)

2. Connecting flights- While Melbourne airport is well connected to rest of the world, Avalon has much lesser connectivity.
3. I've not been to AVV, but being a cheaper airport, expect relatively less/poorer passenger amenities in Avalon, compared to MEL. (Melbourne airport even makes announcements in Hindi)

What happens if I book a ticket to MEL and then they change to AVV?

My guess is, Air Asia X will rebook all such affected passengers to AVV free of cost or give them an option to take credit back (with some 45/90 days validity) (If passengers ask sector change it will never be entertained)

Besides Melbourne, Air Asia X flies to Perth, Sydney and Gold Coast in Australia. During an Air Asia big sale, it is possible to grab a return ticket from India to Australia for around INR 20k. [Details here] Australia tourist visa costs about 8k INR [Details]. Melbourne has lots of places to explore -  You can read my Australia posts here

AirAsia website now shows lowest fare inside calendar

AirAsia website has taken convenience one level up. It now shows lowest fare even before you hit search. Once you select origin and destination, departure date and click on calendar to select return date, system computes lowest possible fare for each date and shows it upfront, without having to hit search.

This is taking AJAX (a technology used in websites to auto populate predicted results) to next level.

This feature is highly useful if you're not particular about travel date and are flexible to fly on whatever date is cheapest. Most websites show the minimum fare for few days adjacent to selected date-like Jet Airways website below- being able to see it for couple of months in one shot is very nice.

I found that on some instances this feature doesn't work. May be when network is slow. I hope Air Asia doesn't turn this feature off during Big Sale period. Happy flying

Jet Airways Bengaluru-Singapore new flight 12k return

Jet Airways has introduced a new direct flight between Bengaluru and Singapore and on some days, you can get one way ticket for about INR 6000.

A return ticket will cost about 12000-13000 rupees.

12k is NOT the cheapest fare to Singapore-Scoot, Indigo and Air Asia(1 stop) might be able to fly you to Singapore for a little less. But Jet Airways being a full service airline, fare includes meals. (Note: This Economy Lite fare doesn't include baggage allowance on Jet Airways) and the fare is NON Refundable and NO date change allowed. So know your risks before booking. If you pay another 6k for Economy deal fare, you will get some more benefits like 20kg baggage allowance and a provision to change dates by paying Rs 3220 and fare difference.

Singapore Visa costs about 4 to 5k, 5 working days.

For optimized Singapore itinerary, check this post

To learn how to manage Singapore trip without buying a package, check this post.

For more Singapore related posts on my other blog, click here

my.flightradar24.com - interactive flight mapping tool!

Recently I wrote a post about a tool that lets you map yourtravel by entering airport codes. One of the readers by the name Saheel Raut suggested a more visually appealing tool, my.flightradar24. FlightRadar24 is a real time flight tracking and updates utility. My.flightradar24.com is the section where you can maintain your personal flight details. I spent some time on it- it was very time consuming to add our flight details, but once added, the site can save them for future reference and also give lots of graphics and visual insights. For example, with the 180+ flights I have entered so far, it seems I have flown the distance equivalent from earth to the moon or about 10 times around the earth. I still need to enter many of my flights, will keep adding when time permits.

Check my flight details here . Yet to add most of the flights taken earlier to 2008

Some nice features of my.flightradar24

1. Ability to view by year
2. Ability to capture lots of data for each flight-flight no, economy/business/, leisure/business, rating facility and so on
3. Provides visuals on top airlines, airports, day of the week and so on
4. Auto populates origin, destination, aircraft type from flight number
5. Possible to edit at a later stage
6. Share a flight detail to facebook or twitter
7. Lots of insights from your travel- kms traveled, amount of CO2 released etc
8. Export and Import Option

Some limitations/possible improvement

• Would have been nice if there was a feature to take PNR code and populate all flights automatically. If my trip had 4 flights, I need to enter each of the flight individually, very time taking process
• Settings are not saved- like if I select year 2017 and distance, next time I login or add a flight display goes back to default.
• While adding past flights, if flight number is now discontinued, we need to enter all the data manually (understandable, I guess airlines only provide current schedule info and not historic)
• Covers only flights- if you had traveled to another country by train/bus etc can’t capture here (which is ok- the site is of course for flight data_
• No provision to capture how many people/additional passenger details
• No provision to control what information is to be made public and what needs to be kept private (Example, if I don't want to disclose my future flights to public, there's no control)

Try it out.

747 flight theme restaurant in OMR Chennai

747 is a flight theme restaurant in Chennai’s OMR (Old Mahabalipuram Road). This restaurant belongs to same owners who run Robots restaurant which I had reviewed earlier. 747 in fact is much older- has been in business for few years now, just that I never managed to pay a visit and check them out.

Finally this Monday evening visited the restaurant. This post is a quick review of my observations

The ambiance- as the name suggests, it is a flight theme restaurant so everything is made to look like interiors of a flight. The ceiling, window, door etc do resemble interiors of the plane. Even a boarding pass is printed and given to guests. There is even a seat belt on each seat. But no push-back. The original orange coloured headrest cover was more colourful than the white ones in use on some of the seats during my visit.

The lobby area is well designed to create an airport ambiance.

Food at 747 Flight theme restaurant in Chennai

The generic review on Zomato was that food is not that good, though ambiance is great. Because of this, I only ordered 1 item- Gobi 65. A plate of Gobi 65 costs Rs 240 on menu, Rs 252 after taxes. Though I was the only customer in the entire restaurant, it took about 20-25 minutes for them to bring my dish. They gave a plate of mango pieces as complementary- that was nice of them, but I couldn’t enjoy this complementary stuff- it was raw mangos (sour in taste) smeared with some sweet sauce, creating an awkward taste.

I would have enjoyed Raw Mango better with salt and chilly power. Anyway below is the quantity of Gobi 65- less than the average quantity I have seen in other restaurants. Taste was ok- no complaints. Every other item costs in the range of 300 rupees plus- most items are Chinese and thai food. I wasn’t very keen to try more food, so left after trying the first one.

The small salt and pepper bottles were cute- but these were present on only few of the tables.

Staff wear uniform of captain and cabin crew- which was nice to look from a distance, but when you take a closer look, you lose impression-because the dress was not ironed, the belts were a force fit etc.

Few windows had lots of dirt. Better cleaning would have been great.

Overhead panel was nice- has light switches, music speaker, a fake seat belt warning light etc. Call button didn’t seam to work or wasn’t really functional. Good thought. If they can have overhead cabin functional (Like customers can keep their bag there) would have been even great.

A boarding pass was issued, after I asked for it..

A more realistic experience would have been to have a folding tray table as in flights and serve food exactly as done in flights- packaged in small trays etc. But I guess management decided to compromise on that part to give more space and comfort to guests. In summary, 747 can be visited once for the sake of experience. If I have to chose between this and the Robot, I would chose the later. It is located on the 3rd floor of the building that houses barbecue nation in Thuraipakkam area, OMR (near Jain College and Sangeetha). Opens at 7 PM for dinner.

Do follow me on Zomato

Create a flight map of your travels

Don’t you wish to plot all your travels on a world map?

For some time I was checking for best way to plot my travel on a map. Google map allows only 10 destinations per map. There are many other mapping tools – some you’ve to download, few others you’ve to pay and so on. Of various tools I could try out, I find great circle mapper most convenient.

You just have to enter the airports in sequence and GC Mapper will draw the relevant map for you. It will resize the world map to suit the destinations you’ve visited. Also there’re multiple themes to select from. Great Circle mapper also gives a total of how many miles you’ve flown.

Some drawbacks- no option to save your map. You’ve to save airport sequence locally if you wish to reuse it later. Also if there’s an error going back may not work. You’ve to copy airport sequence from URL, correct the mistake and try again. Also you should recall airport codes of all airports you’d like to use. If you’d flown very little but have done extensive hiking, road trip etc then GC mapper may not be your best choice.

Below are some of my travel maps

My 2015 Travel map – got to visit lots of countries in Europe. You can read details of my 2015 travel here

My 2016 Travel Map (total 37000 miles or 60000 kms). You can read details of my 2016 travel here

My 2017 Travel Map (total 49000 miles or 79000 kms) You can read details ofmy 2017 travel here

You can play around and create a flight map for your travel. There is no limitation on the length- you can enter hundreds of airports.

http://www.gcmap.com/

Tripadvisor has a map view of all the cities you’ve been to and it tells what percentage of the world you’ve traveled.

Are you aware of any better tool to create your flight maps? Do share in comments below.

Delhi-Beijing return 21k on Singapore Airlines

I had earlier written about Chennai-Beijing return ticket availability at 20k on Srilankan Airlines.

A friend on twitter (Pradeep Patra, @pradeeppatra001 has highlighted that Delhi-Beijing return ticket is also available for INR 21k on Singapore Airlines. If you're in Delhi and want to explore China, this could be your chance.

Above shown amount was the lowest I could find for some date combinations in Nov-Dec 2018 (Nov 28-Dec 5 etc). You can try further to see if it is any cheaper (I suspect no). If you're not comfortable with dates, you can try other nearby dates- available within 25k for most dates.

From Mumbai, a Beijing return ticket is available for about 27k

21k for a return ticket on Singapore Airlines is a great deal, considering that SQ is one of the best airlines with great food and services. Also you'll have enough transit time in Changi airport for a free Singapore City Tour. 

Fly to Beijing, China for 20k return, Srilankan

If you had China on your radar, your chance is NOW. You can get a return ticket to Beiing for a mouth watering INR 20k return, with full service airline, Srilankan.

This is for select dates in late 2018 and you have to act NOW before they are gone.

Try between late November and early December.

Under normal conditions, a return trip to Beijing will cost about 40k. Even with best price on AirAsia during its big sale, it is usually around 25k onwards. With a full service airline like Srilankan, it is a steal- baggage, meals included.

But note that the amount will be non-refundable. No date change, no refund is applicable if you can’t go. So be sure that you can travel as planned.

Note: Delhi-Beijing return available for similar fare on Singapore Airlines.

Srilankan Travel Fest-Colombo return for 8k, upto 50% off-Book now!

Srilankan has some really tempting fares to Srilanka- Chennai-Colombo return ticket is available for INR 8214 for most dates in April, May, June. This is under Srilankan travel fest, in which up to 50% off is promised. Similar price from other cities in India

Considering that Srilankan is a full service airline, your ticket fare includes 40 kgs of check in bag and inflight meals and in most cases, you will be flying a wide body A330 with entertainment systems. Thus on any day Srilankan is a better option compared to Spicejet/Indigo or Air India flights.

I don't think a return ticket to Srilanka will get cheaper than 8k. If you have Srilanka on your mind, go book now.

Lowest fares:
Chennai-Colombo Return: 8214
Madurai-Colombo return:  12561
Bengaluru-Colombo return: 10275
Coimbatore-Colombo return: 13497

You can also try flying Srilankan to nearby destinations like Maldives or other cities they connect to, though I didn't find such destination ticket prices "Mouth Watering", except to Maldives and China (Check a separate post- Fly to Beijing for 20k return)

However note that the low fares are non refundable, not possible to change dates. Essentially be ready to lose 100% if you can't fly as planned.

Read my detailed experience with Srilankan here

Book here: http://www.srilankan.com/en_uk/in

Gift a flight with Indigo Gift Vouchers

If you wish to gift something to your loved ones in a non-cash format, most popular formats so far were flipkart vouchers, Amazon or shoppers Stop vouchers etc. Now you can gift a flight to your loved ones. Indigo has introduced Indigo Gift Vouchers- which you can buy, add a customized message and send to your loved ones, who can use this for flight bookings.

Below are the things you should know while buying and gifting Indigo Gift voucher:

1. Available in denominations of Rs 500, 1000, 2000 and 5000
2. Validity will be 9 months from the date of purchase (flipkart vouchers have 1 year)
3. No partial redemption allowed- Entire coupon needs to be consumed in one transaction. If ticket amount is less than coupon amount, entire coupon amount will be consumed.
4. Using this coupon doesn't get any extra benefit- all taxes and fees, including convenience fee will apply as usual. (No extra fee applies while buying the gift voucher, but while booking the ticket convenience fee will be deducted even if payment mode is gift voucher)
5. There is also a MobiKwik supercash offer trap- read below for details

It is not very clear what happens in case ticket booked through this coupon needs to be cancelled.

A booking made through Indigo Coupon also entitles one to some mobiKwik supercash- 20% of Voucher value or Rs 500 whichever is maximum. But this MobiKwik supercash is a trap- if you hve Rs 500 worth supercash, you can't use it to buy something worth Rs 500. You will have to buy stuff worth 20 times or so- like something to the tune of 10000 and you will get to pay Rs 500 from supercash. This is a trap to make people spend more- read my detailed post here (on similar GoIbibo cash)

If you have loved ones who prefer to travel instead of shopping, Indigo gift voucher may be a good option. Website: https://giftvoucher.goindigo.in/