Indigo cancellation concerns-Analysis and recommendation

With Jet Airways in a financial mess, Air India having its own concerns and limited network of Vistara, Indigo is the undisputed market leader in India’s aviation business. However, earlier this month Indigo drew wrath of lots of passengers has they had to cancel 30+ flights and worse, these cancellations are extended till end of March. While some excuses like airport closure, hailstorm etc were given as a reason, the unstated news is that Indigo is facing shortage of pilots. With this background, many of my readers were concerned if their Indigo flight will operate as per schedule. Indigo hasn’t made a specific announcement listing what exact flights are cancelled and which all will operate as per schedule. Only affected passengers are informed in person.

So is it safe to continue booking with Indigo? What are the alternatives? What precautions to take? This post offers my analysis.

Is it safe to book with Indigo? Yes.

Understand that Indigo operate 1300+ flights a day. Cancellation of 30 of them is about 2.2% of their operation. Probability of your flight is being one of these 30 is too low

I understand Indigo has been very careful while cancelling the flights- since the issue is shortage of pilots they can chose which flights to cancel. Indigo is cancelling only such flights where it is possible to provide an alternate option to passengers

For example, they will cancel one of the flights from schedules that have multiple flights per day between cities. There’re 5 direct flights between Chennai and Delhi- if they have to cut some flights, they would cut one of these- so that affected passengers can either take an earlier or later flight OR go for one stop flight via say Hyderabad, Kolkata or Mumbai.

It is not possible predict delays weeks in advance. Delay, cancellations can happen with any airline, due to dozens of reasons most of which are not in airline’s control. If you wish to avoid Jet Airways that is understandable given their crisis situation. If you have Air Vistara with decent price you might wish to book it blindly. If not Indigo seems to be the best option, I would say go ahead and book. They do have a decent network- almost half the market share- there is a small risk but I think it is very low and worth taking.

My Experience:

I had a flight to Mumbai last weekend. Vistara doesn’t fly between Mumbai and Chennai, so I had to chose between remaining airlines. I chose to avoid Jet Airways for now, due to their precarious situation. Of the remaining- Indigo, Go Air, Air India, Spicejet, Indigo had multiple flights per day. Thus I decided to take a chance- I flew in Friday night though it would have been convenient to fly Saturday early morning. This was to factor some buffer time- in case my flight is cancelled I could take next flight and still make it to the event in Mumbai. The onward flight was on time. No issues at all. In fact Spicejet had lots of cancellations.

On the return flight, boarding happened on time, but there was no copilot. He came in late and we took off some 40 minutes late. We were told crew had to come in an another flight which was delayed. We also had an off duty pilot sitting as passenger. Eventually we made it to Chennai with some 30-40 minute delay.

Precautions to take

Keep buffer. If you have a crucial meeting on Monday morning 10 AM, don’t plan such that you’ll land at 8 AM. Take an earlier flight- may be Sunday evening or Monday very early morning, so that even if there’s an issue you’ve some buffer time to take alternate flight.

Check Plan B- in case your flight is to be cancelled what would be your Plan B? Does Indigo got another flight same day? Or is a one stop flight is viable for you?

Overall, I would say there’s nothing significant to worry about Indigo’s pilot problem. Go ahead and book if you find Indigo convenient and cheap.

Vistara Valentine's-Day sale is good- grab some good deals

Multiple airlines are running a sale in the name of Valentine's day.

Srilankan is offering up to 50% off on business class ticket for partner.

Indigo is running a Rs 889 onwards sale- which you can check if it excites you. Tried a few destinations of my interest, didn't find the fares low enough to be tempting.

However Vistara's sale seem to be good.

You can get Chennai-Kolkata return for INR 4997 (Economy lite),
Other destinations are also reasonably priced- even lower than Indigo in most cases for Economy lite category. Or as seen earlier, at times even premium economy value rates are very tempting.

So go check on Vistara's website- low fare rates are valid for today and tomorrow.

Air India happy to lose genuine customers than let a bot query!

India's National Carrier Air India is more worried about some bots or computers making booking inquiry on their website (and taking up server resources) than genuine customers walking away irritated by its captcha and "prove that you're not a robot" validations.

Air India is the only airline website that harasses prospective customers till the breaking point, so that most of them will give up and go elsewhere, than spend all their time, energy and effort to prove to Air India website that they are humans and not bots.

If you click on "Book a flight" on Air India website, first you've to prove that you're not a robot. If you try opening it in Incognito mode, website gets even more suspicious and throws a dozen challenges to you, to select cars in the picture, traffic lights in the picture and so on. At some point you might be able to convince the system to let you proceed, but in most cases you're likely to close the window and open makemytrip or some other airline website.

No other airline website has this problem. They all let you check the fares without any issues.

"Prove that you're not a robot" challenge is thrown only when user makes too many queries back to back forcing system to think if this person is genuine or trying a DDOS (Deadly Denial Of Service attack, often aimed to take down a website/service provider by overloading their servers with useless queries)

Air India has some good fares- to Andaman, to Kathmandu and so on, where Air India fares are cheaper than competition. Air India doesn't charge extra convenience fee, meals and baggage are included, seat selection is free (back of the plane)- so there're still some good reasons to chose Air India over other airlines in some scenario. Making booking experience complicated for those interested is just not good for Air India's own interest.

When MMT, Cleartrips of the world can handle millions of queries and transactions, what is bothering Air India? Why they are so hell bent on making a customer go through a super complicated process? Aren't there a better way to secure the website against DDOS? As such people hate Air India and avoid it- even those who care a bit, try to enquire/book are discouraged this way.

Hope people at Air India take note and act.

OmanAir refusing refund on Delhi-Iran low fare!

Oman Air needs to get its act together.

Jan 25-27, Oman Air website listed a very low fare for Delhi-Tehran-Delhi sector. Hundreds of people, excited by the prospect of traveling to Iran super cheap made bookings. Some for Feb, some for April and some for other months in 2019. Many also spent extra money to fly to Delhi from their respective cities.

One week later, news broke out that Oman Air is not going to honor these low fares, blaming them on a technical glitch. Subsequently, all such passengers got email, either to pay fare difference (some 42k extra for round trip) or take full refund.

It made no sense to spend 50k to fly to Iran- if one can spend 50k, there’re 100 other more exciting destinations they can explore. Naturally, many opted for full refund. Passengers had to fill up a refund form on Oman Air’s website with all minute details including e-ticket numbers, wasting lots of time for no fault of theirs.

Few days later, passengers are getting email stating “Only tax component can be refunded”- screenshot below.

 This is like insult to injury, forcing passengers to call up Oman air customer care. While Oman Air customer care insists that passengers will get full refund, they refuse to send it in writing, they won’t give any email ID/escalation email ID to which affected passengers can complain. So now 1000s of passengers are left licking their wounds, cursing their decision to book on Oman Air and probably resolving never to book Oman Air ever again. All they can do is wait and hope for full refund, which is not yet assured in writing.

Public are not taking this Oman Air mess lightly

1. Many people have protested in Delhi against Oman Air- read news here.

2. Another person has initiated legal proceedings against Oman Air- details in this tweet

3. A Change.Org petition has been initiated to gain votes to Boycot Oman Air

Earlier communication, refusing to honor low fares and asking customers to pay difference or take refund.

Oman Air Email to passengers of Delhi-Iran flight

Above: Oman air internal circular

On the other hand, Oman Air sends an email asking me to upgrade to business class. I understand it is a system generated mail, but airline is totally insensitive in sending useless mails and wasting time.

Till date, Oman Air has not given any official response. No apology, No compensation. Press release section of Oman Air website has no mention of this mess.

Affected passengers are contacted in an individual manner and coaxed to cough up the fare difference and those not willing to do so are subjected to more torture, inconvenience and irritation by refusing full refund and make them waste even more time following up with Oman Air. Oman Air’s social media handles won’t respond if queried about this mess. Oman Air twitter handle seem to be busy conducting some contest answer for which seem to be "Cenderella"

In my opinion Oman air is unnecessarily getting into a PR Mess. They could have cut their losses, honor the tickets, use the incident to get some new customers, publicity and goodwill, which is probably a good compensation for lost revenue. By being adamant, by making customers run from pillar to post, Oman Air is losing potential customers and getting lots of bad press.

Jet airways cancellation charge now at Rs 9200 return!

Jet Airways has revised cancellation charges to Rs 4600 one way, or Rs 9200 round trip, if passengers wish to cancel within 7 days of departure and has booked a lite or deal fare. Cancellation charge is Rs 3800 if cancelled more than 7 days prior to departure.

Similarly date change fee is revised to Rs 4300 and 3500 if a reschedule is requested by passengers within or before 7 days respectively. [TOI News]

This is another attempt by struggling Jet Airways to discourage passengers from traveling or earn more money from not flying a passengers than what they can earn by flying them.

The cancellation fee of Rs 4600 one way or Rs 9200 round trip is likely to be more than the ticket cost for most scenarios. Except for one stop connecting flights, most direct flights within India sells for 3-4k or less, if booked few months in advance.

If you’re holding a Jet Airways ticket and unable to fly, what to do?

If you’ve paid a lot of money (like 7-10k) and don’t want to take a chance, you might wish to go ahead, pay cancellation fee and take refund. But in most cases, it is advisable not to cancel. 

• There is fair possibility that Jet Airways itself will cancel the flight last minute- in which case they are required to give you full refund.
• If not full cancellation, Jet Airways may reschedule, re route you etc- even for which you can claim new timings/options are not viable for you and take refund.
• If above two doesn’t happen, you can file for airport tax refund post departure. Airlines are required to refund tax component of the ticket if passenger doesn’t show up. This means you will get a refund of few hundred rupees per ticket.  If your ticket value is less than Rs 5000, this is best option.

If you'd booked on a 3rd party website like MMT, they would charge their own fee in addition to Airline's cancellation fee. So you will get even less.

Cleverly, there’s absolutely no mention of any compensation when Jet Airways cancels the flight. This cancellation policy could be deemed fare if Jet Airways also had a corresponding compensation policy- like if flight is cancelled after passenger reaches airport, Jet should arrange alternate flight and offer compensation and not just give refund. Past few months twitter and FB are full of complaints from people who are informed of their flight cancellation last minute and are stranded. Many had to pay huge amount to buy last minute ticket on other airlines and Jet has no process to reimburse such expenses induced by last minute cancellation of its flights. While they are trying to extract lots of money from passengers, it is only fair they offer similar compensation when passengers are affected by Jet Airways induced flight cancellations. But right now their situation is so bad, you should be lucky to just receive your refund, let alone any compensation.

There's no point paying 3x more for flex fares. Even flex fares attract massive refund/date change fees.

Of course this means one more reason NOT to book Jet Airways for future travel- their flight schedule is unreliable, cancellations are very likely and airline is finding newer ways to milk customers. I would simply avoid Jet Airways for next few months till they sort out their mess.

Spicejet 1.75Rs/km fare + .75/km Rs convenience fee sale

Spicejet has given a full page ad in Today's Times of India advertising their 1.75 Rs / km sale (domestic). Naturally sounds tempting, but I did some checks and below are my findings

Cheap fares available for select destinations such as
Chennai-Kochi 1100 one way
Chennai-Goa -2100 one way
Chennai Bengaluru INR 899 one way etc, for travel till Sep 2019

However, return ticket won't be equally cheap- while Chennai-BLR is 899, BLR-Chennai will be like 1300 or 1400, making total round trip to 2200+ Convenience fee

While the ad claims their fares are cheaper than bus, train, auto, convenience fee is cleverly forgotten. A convenience fee of Rs 250 one way for domestic sector means you will be paying as high as 0.75 to 1 Rs per km as convenience fee.

I tried to check if there're any deals tempting enough- couldn't find anything super cheap. If you have some destinations to where Spicejet has direct flight from your city, you may try- if lucky you will find fares cheaper than normal.

Downgraded from AirAsia Platinum to Gold!

In 2017, I took some 24+ flights with AirAsia and was upgraded to Platinum tier from Gold

In 2018, I took a total of 16 flights, which was 8 short of 24 target, so I am now promptly downgraded back to Gold. They cancelled Chennai-Bhuvaneshwar flights and I couldn’t go to Cambodia

But did the platinum status make any difference? No. Unlike other airlines, AirAsia’s Loyalty program doesn’t give any complementary benefits to its members, even if they reach top of the tier Black Status.

• No lounge access
• No priority boarding
• No upgrade to hot seat
• Absolutely nothing.

If you spend money on shopping and other transactions you will get some points, but I usually never do them. For food bought onboard no provision to claim points. Those based in Malaysia have more choices. Other countries, not much. Only benefit of higher tier membership is more big points on your bookings, but with a rider. The lowest promo fares get you ZERO points, irrespective of tier. Only the regular (expensive) fares qualify for some points.  Since I only flew on lowest promo fares, all of 2018 I wasn’t awarded a single loyalty point. I have some 4000 points which were earned before their new Freedom loyalty program came into being. Read my detailed review of Air Asia Freedom Loyalty Program.

So what motivation do I have to try return to Platinum status? None.  I don’t have any more flights with AirAsia coming up either.

Thus extreme low fare will be the only reason to book AirAsia- but since mid-2018 there haven’t been any deep discount sale. Hopefully next big sale will offer deep discounts at fare levels I had seen earlier. Have a few destinations and a target price in mind- will book if I can get those fares. Never mind the zero loyalty points. But most likely I will go back to Red this year...

Also read: 10 reasons why I am not a big fan of airline loyalty programs * 

Visiting Brunei from India- your flight options

If you'd like to visit Brunei from India, like I did last month, here're your best option

Most luxurious option will be to fly Singapore Airlines, who fly to Brunei from various Indian cities via Changi hub in Singapore.  You travel in style with SQs full service that includes bag, meals and other facilities and timings are fairly convenient too. But SQ fare would set you back by about 40k INR one way or roughly 75-80k return, which is bit too much for price sensitive passengers. May be a bit cheap if India leg is silk air.

Malaysia Airline is next best option, supposed to be cheaper than SQ, but will always be more expensive than low cost Air Asia.  AirAsia round trip ticket can cost you about 20-25k under normal fares, may be 15k or less if you manage to grab some cheap fares during big sale. My round trip ticket was 7800 per person, but that was booked in 2017 and I don't know if we will ever see such ultra low fares again.

AirAsia fare won't include bag and meals, factor an additional 5k to 10k for the same if you need it.

If you're not keen on making an exclusive trip, your best option will be to fly to Brunei on Royal Brunei Airlines, from any of the cities they fly directly to- such as Singapore, Manila, Dubai, Yangon, Melbourne, Brisbane and so on. When you're based in/visiting these cities and have a few days to spare, you can consider a trip to Brunei. But be advised Royal Brunei Airways tickets won't be cheap.

Entering by Road via Kota Kinabalu or Miri (both Malaysian territories) is an option but may not be viable unless you've a Malayisan identity.