HOW TO EARN ---------------------------------------------------------
Airline Loyalty Points ---------------------------------------------------------
For Your Next ‘Holiday’
By- Rajat Chakraborty
Copyright Information
The 'Trawellblogger's Guides' free versions are intended for the sole purpose of learning and no part can be reproduced, printed, edited, copied, or amended neither in digital nor physical print formats without the prior consent of the author. The guides are FREE to use and distribute to you and your friends and you can share them with your friends ONLY after proper attribution to the author of this ebook. This e-book is self-published and copyright of Pack-Ur-Bags Travel Blog @ 2016, (http://trawellblogging.com/). All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer
The 'Trawellblogger's Guides' free version are developed for learning purposes and includes content related to Airline Loyalty Programs based on the information provided by the Airline Companies. Such information is bound by rules of the respective airlines and are regularly updated from time to time. While such updates will be regularly brought out on the author's blog http://trawellblogging.com, the readers are also advised to refer to the airline websites from time-to-time for the updated information if they choose to join and use any of the loyalty programs. The information provided in this e-book is just a guideline and no part of this ebook can or should be claimed or used as a standard or benchmark to define the policies on Loyalty Earnings. At no point of time should the author of this e-book held responsible for changes, updates, and circumstances arising out of the terms and conditions applicable through the various airline programs cited here. The readers are advised to carefully research themselves and also read the terms and conditions of a particular program before they start using such programs. The views expressed by the author in this e-book while compiling the benefits of the airline loyalty programs, are purely based on the research of the author and have no implication on the functioning or whatsoever of such loyalty programs in place. The endeavour of the author is to simply share the knowledge in the simplest means as possible and the readers are also welcome to express their alternate views if any on the same.
A humble request
Every part of this e-book has taken immense effort and motivation to keep it free for your use as far as possible. While the e-book is available FREE for use to its readers, it does cost the author to continuously update, research, reproduce and upload the content for its readers. To keep these e-books FREE for you in future, the author has also included some travel affiliate links and codes that can help generate a small sum everytime, to keep providing you with FREE content. You can show you appreciation by considering making your online purchases through these links, as a small portion of it gets diverted to keep this book free, forever. It is just a humble request to the generous readers, and everyone is free to take a call, as they are free to read this e-book, free of cost.
Acknowledgements
I sincerely express my thanks to all the readers who have chosen to tread the path of 'traveling', for no one can match the wealth they will gain through this journey. I wish to share a Vietnamese quote that I read from the famous book 'Rich Dad Poor Dad Series' - Thich Naht Hahn - The path is the goal ; and there is no other way to express this quote than saluting those who dared to move away from the shores to define their own journey. If you are one of those, this book is for you, for today, even you have gathered the same courage to break free and define a path for yourself. No one else can emulate what you create on the way- that's the exclusivity of your journey.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hello and thank you for downloading my e-book: How to Earn Loyalty Points for your Next Holiday. In this e-
book, I share about how to break free from the conventional ways of earning frequent flying miles and rather use a more layman’s approach for accumulating
frequent flying miles. I show you how you do not necessarily need a credit card to accumulate miles for your trip and how there are more fun ways to accumulate thousands of miles every year on your account, without getting yourself into credit card debts. The Travel Hacking is a subject of immense controversy and has intrigued travel hackers across the globe. There are several techniques the travel hackers use for gaining frequent flying miles and travel almost free of cost. The reason is that in the Western countries, the concept of Frequent Flying Programs is universally accepted by both businessmen as well as employees on a regular day job. Frequent Flying Miles is in fact a part of the CTC (Cost to Company) while deciding the salary of Corporate Employees. Due to this reason, the Frequent Flying Mile Businesses are more customers centric and more focussed to deal with the requirements of most of the customers and Corporate Industry. However, in India, this is not the case. The Frequent Flying Programs are still limited and still used by only the most influential segment of the Indian society, despite the fact that the benefits earned out of these programs are immense. As a matter of fact, in the course of putting this book together, I interacted with several people across India with different financial backgrounds and realized that almost none of them even knew how it worked and such a thing even exists at all. Hence, this e-book. I also first tried to go the way the Western travellers had been trying to do it, but soon realized the nuisances involved in the entire process. With several loopholes in the cash back and loyalty programs, this sector is still much unorganized, but with more and more
users, there is an immense potential for many travellers to start adopting it. Especially the citizens who are on day jobs, trying to use the Frequent Flying Miles program can be immensely helpful, as much of the travel expenses are often unrecoverable. Almost four out of five people that I interact with everyday quit their travel plans because the gap between the affordability of a travel package and the availability is ever increasing and no matter how hard the service providers try to compromise on the travel packages, the highly dynamic airline prices is enough to derail any ones travel plans in no time. It is not that the people cannot afford to pay for their leisure travel, but the traditional Indian thinking necessitates people to give more priority to save for emergency first than focus on leisure, unlike the Western countries. That is why, we do not hesitate even once to cancel or postpone our travel plans the moment we find the budget is slipping out of our hands. In fact, most of the travellers do not even start planning at all, just because they do not want to face the situation of bargaining with the service providers. In this book, I try to change the approach by simply asking you to change the way you spend on your travel and change the thinking that travel is an expense rather than investment. In this e-book you will see how:1. Travel is not an expense but an investment 2. How just by changing the way you spend, you change the way you think about travel. 3. How you can spend in a disciplined way to make enough miles until the end of the year to sponsor yourself a free trip. 4. How you can create a travel portfolio for yourself, just by continuing to spend on your daily needs, and not a penny extra out of it. I am as excited to give away this e-book for FREE as I understand that you feel about getting all your questions answered. I hope you enjoy reading and learning from every part of this e-book as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. If there is any way I can make this book better than today that is only by your advice, views, reviews, analysis and queries. If I can spark the understanding among the readers how their expenses can create a potential for long term travel, I believe the purpose of writing this ebook will be fulfilled.
SERVICES OFFERED:In addition to what you find in this e-book, I also offer travel planning services and help you set up a travel portfolio for yourself. Here is how you can stay in touch with me whenever you have any doubts or queries regarding your travel plans:1. Regular Updates: I regularly update my travel experiences, service reviews, travel hacks, and destination reviews on my blog. You can also stay updated with the various travel stories, tips, recommendations, and offers that I share from time to time on my blog – Pack-Ur-Bags - A Trawellblogger's Guide to Explore Life!!!
2. Email Newsletters: You can also contact me on email for any questions on travel hacking and how to start off with the online travel programs. If you have any questions, you can always send an email to me on
[email protected]. 3. Travel Planning: I like helping out travellers to plan their trips through my travel hacking experiences and craft out custom itineraries at desired budgets. If this is something you are looking for, please do not hesitate to contact me on the above email. I do not charge any fees for it. All I ask is to use the referral links I share with you to make your bookings, since that pays me a small fee on the booking on your behalf. So your fees are taken care of by the service providers. Sounds good!!
WHY AM I GIVING AWAY THIS E-BOOK FOR FREE:Well, I initially thought of doing so, and I would be honest about that. But eventually I realized that the potential of creating a larger community of people who could use the services listed here is huge, and it surpasses the petty sum that I would have ended up charging from my readers. In fact, I intend that the readers who downloaded it should freely share it with more of their friends and peers so that more people could know and start using it. The only favour that I ask is that I have used certain referral links in this e-book to lead you to the multitude of
services that I use, so that you too can join and help me create a larger community of frequent travellers. You can pay me back by using these links to register for the various services as this will allow me to recover the cost of keeping it FREE for the rest of the country – forever. Here is a list of services that I use and that I have referred throughout this e-book. Help me to continue doing my work by signing up with these links and creating accounts for you. 1. Agoda 2. Rocketmiles 3. Pointshound 4. Kaligo 5. Oxigen Wallet
When you use one of the services listed here and the ones I have used in the subsequent pages of this e-book, it helps me to keep my budgets running to publish more such reference materials and e-books for you in the long run.
Table of Contents Section-1: Introduction to the Airline Loyalty Programs ....................................................8-13
1. What Are Airline Loyalty Programs .................................................................................. 9 2. Why Do You Need an Airline Loyalty Program at all? ..............................................10-11 3. Why you do not need a credit card for a Frequent Flying Mile Program? ..............12-13 Section-2: How to Join Up with the Various Airline Loyalty Programs ............................14-18
4. Introduction to the major Airline Loyalty Programs ................................................15-16 5. Tips to joining the Airline Loyalty Programs .............................................................17-18 Section-3: How to Earn Miles ............................................................................................19-30
6. On Co-partnered Flights ...........................................................................................20-24 7. While being grounded ............................................................................................... 25-27 8. Other useful ways to earn miles ..............................................................................28-30 Section-4: How to Use Miles .............................................................................................31-38
9. Introduction ..............................................................................................................32-33 10. Expiry of Miles ................................................................................................................ 34 11. Redeeming Miles on Flight Bookings ......................................................................35-36 12. Redeeming Miles on E-Commerce Purchases ................................................................ 37 13. Gifting Miles .................................................................................................................. 38 Section-5: How to Make the Most out of Your Miles ......................................................39-45
14. Track your miles using the Mileage Calculator ........................................................40-41 15. Getting Value out of your points ..............................................................................42-45 Section-6: Practical Examples ...........................................................................................46-55
16. The Math Behind the Points .....................................................................................47-53 17. DIY Exercises ..............................................................................................................54-55 Section-7: In the End ........................................................................................................56- 70
18. Summarizing the Miles Game ..................................................................................57-58 19. A Token of Thanks ......................................................................................................... 59 20. Glossary of Terms ......................................................................................................60-68 21. Useful Links and Resources .......................................................................................69-70
SECTION -1
Introduction to the Airline Loyalty Programs
What Are Airline Loyalty Programs
The Airline Loyalty Programs are not new but have been in existence for ages. It is only that not many people try to find out about them. The Airline Loyalty Programs allow the Frequent Flyers to invest certain part of their travel expenses to gain purchase points that accumulate in their individual travel account. There purchase points or miles can then be easily used for future purchases either in part or whole depending upon your travel budget. This allows travellers the flexibility to manage the ever expensive and upscale travel expenses in control. Even in India, the Airline programs are offered by Jet Airways and Air India in both domestic and international sectors that helps travellers to gain returns on their travel investments. It is a powerful way of managing your travel expenses and when used in an intelligent manner, can help you create a travel portfolio for not only yourself but for your entire family over time. Imagine being able to travel your dream destinations at almost 50% the actual cost, only by changing your spending habits. If your spending can also earn you an international trip at the end of the year, won't you do that? At least, I will definitely like to give it a try. The Airline Loyalty Programs allow you to accumulate travel points or miles on not only your airfares but also on more than 200 allied travel services which include but are not limited to flights, hotels, buses, cars, food, shopping, reading, international calling, health and insurance and the list is endless. All you need to do is, focus on how to invest on such services and the rest will fall into place eventually. In this e-book, I also share with you some strategies that can easily get you started. To add some fun, I have also done some number crunching for you to understand how you can work out on your points’ accumulation. Based on your travel budget, it offers you with the flexibility to use the points accumulated in lieu of the physical money to encash while you plan to buy yourself a flight ticket or book a hotel using your travel points. Not only that, you can also keep earning points on the purchases made with your travel miles. This is the best way to leverage your investments in the long term.
Why do you need an Airline Loyalty Program at all?
As said before, the Airline Loyalty programs help you leverage your investments on travel, which most of us, otherwise consider as a onetime expense. The cost of travel is sometimes essential and almost always irrecoverable. When combined with your annual investment plans, it can often shake your investment plans and also your budgets. As a statistic that I encounter most of the time, 4 out of 5 travellers cancel their travel plans due to last minute shaky budgets. The gap between affordability and overpricing is often closed with the dropped or delayed plans. Even someone does end up beyond the budgets; they may not plan another trip too soon, unless there is some way to recover that expense. Most of the travellers in India prefer trains over flights as the gap between the train and air fares is beyond the regular traveler's reach. Let's take into account these questions:1. How often do you end up with a confirmed train reservation? 2. How many times do you need to drop your travel plans just because of a last minute non-confirmed train ticket? 3. What if you have to travel anyhow, whether you have a reservation or not, since you have an emergent situation? 4. What happens when you end up spending your valuable money that you saved to attend an emergency, on expensive last minute flight tickets? 5. What if your job keeps you on a spin making you travel from pillar to post? 6. You often get limited time for your leisure travel and when you start planning, you realize your hands are always tight on a travel budget? The Airline Loyalty Programs allows you to accumulate points on your initial investment which can help you close such decision-making gaps without much burden on your pockets. That too, uses your essential expenses in such a way that concerts into travel points on your travel account.
Let us take an example. You need to buy your monthly essentials such as groceries, mobile recharges, electricity bills, medical expenses, food, weekend expenses, books and magazines, home electronics, festival shopping to name a few. If you are say able to convert 75-80% of these expenses into recurring points that you can then use to plan your holidays, how would that be? Simply put, by just changing the way you have been spending on your essentials, you can give yourself an achievable travel plan at the end of the year. Extend it to your entire family and you are talking about a travel portfolio that could benefit everyone.
Why you do not need a Credit Card for an Airline Loyalty Program?
Most of the miles programs give you more benefits for using a credit card. With the present changes in the Indian banking regulations, the CIBIL score makes it essential for having a better credit score- even when you wish to own a credit card. But things do not end here. The points is, even if you are able to improve your credit score somehow, and manage to get a credit card or two for yourself, it also brings in the credit percentage you have to pay to the credit card companies which may not be told to you while purchasing the card. The option of using a credit card is good one, if you have the capability to clear off the debts at hand, and also if you are good enough to manage both sides of the transactions, miles and credits. But eventually, if your cash in hand is not enough to clear off the credits you earn on time, you might soon find yourself off track trying to meet ends to clear off the credit card bills and soon, your actual purpose of miles accrual using credit cards will take a backseat. It is true that the credit card companies earn you a lot of bulk miles just for subscribing one of those, but remember, there is a higher price you should be prepared to deliver when trying to work with one of these programs. Secondly, I have interacted with many travel hackers abroad - Nomadic Matt is my favourite. Matt has his famous book 'How to Start Traveling the World in $25 or Less', speaks about how he accumulates more than 100000 Miles every month and travel almost every time for FREE. I was considering to buy out his e-book online when I just thought why not ask him how his book could be helpful to me and the other fellow Indians. So, I shot him an email asking him how I can start a similar program in India. Almost instantly, I received a short email reply saying, there is not much you can do by purchasing and using credit cards. And I instantly realized why. Here's why you cannot use credit cards
for the miles program:1. There is no way you can consolidate points earned from credit card purchases into a single account. 2. There are high and abrupt penalties on credit cards in India. It has the capability to derail your entire mileage program purpose.
3. The methods of redeeming the points for card usage are scattered, arbitrary and haphazard. You will literally bang your head against the wall trying to redeem the points back into your account as miles. 4. The credit percentage is quite high -2% per month almost. When added per annum, it is about 24% per year. Now you see what I am coming to? 5. There
may be
high mileage bonus
at signup, but
the
redeemed
points
on credit card are almost as trivial as the ones accumulated on your monthly expenses. If you get the same or lesser points for regular transactions, why take them with a debt instead? 6. Finally, if you do not clear your credit card debts on time, you will lose your credit score faster, as also all the points that you earn on your credit card. There are others such as Bryce Conway, founder of 10X Travel and author of his EBook: Take Away where he shows how you can put your various credit cards through single
consolidated websites for miles accrual. Even Bryce, in his e-book, clearly indicates that if you consistently do not maintain your credit scores, you might end yourself into a black hole of irrecoverable debt. The methods mentioned in this e-book try to address a middle path to this problem. Though you do not earn enough miles in the beginning, as you eventually upgrade into tiers, with the flights you take using your miles, you increase the scope of earning more miles per year. Also, it is better to bother about how many miles to earn rather than worrying about how much debt to clear at the end of the month.
SECTION -2
How to Join Up with the Various Airline Loyalty Programs
Introduction to the major Airline Loyalty Programs
The two major Indian airlines that offer the Airline Loyalty Programs are the Indian Airlines and Jet Airways. The Air Asia is also one of the major Airline Loyalty Program with a
huge opportunity to earn BIG Points on various travel related purchases. We will see how you can also make the most out of the Air Asia BIG Loyalty Program as well, in the forthcoming chapters of this e-book. As a beginner, these are the following Airline Programs to start off with:1. Jet Airways Jet Privilege Program 2. Air Asia BIG Loyalty Points Program 3. Lufthansa Airlines 4. British Airways I have been using the first two programs and recommend them for any beginner. They are good to initially start with and learning how to create and build your travel portfolio slowly and steadily. Go ahead and experiment them to your best and find out what suits your travel budget and returns. The scope of accumulating points on various Airline Loyalty Programs change from one airline to another and how much points you earn is usually dependent upon the policies of the respective airline. When working with a particular airline program, you should carefully study the various guidelines laid out by the airline program to maximize the benefits out of the program. For this e-book, I have put in certain calculations in place for the benefit of all the readers. This will help you to gain a preliminary insight on how you can benefit from the program. You can find the links to these calculators at the end of the e-book.
Most of the Frequent Flying Programs let you earn miles and points in the following broad categories:1. Flights 2. Hotels 3. Tours 4. Allied transportation - Buses, Trains, Taxis 5. Online Shopping - Utility Bills, home electronics, mobile recharges etc. 6. Credit, Debit and Travel Cards from various banks 7. Books and Magazine Subscriptions 8. Foods, beverages and restaurants 9. Allied Travel Websites and services 10. Health and Wellness Services When combined, there are more than 200+ services in these broad categories, including a large spectrum of products and services that give you immense opportunities for earning your valuable miles, points, and cash backs. This simply means that all this while, when you didn't know that every essential expense you made for a living could earn travel points out of it, you had been losing most of your investments and expenses without any returns on them. This is where you can capitalize on these opportunities.
Remember.......................................................................................................................
Travel is not as expensive as it appears. It only has vast bundle of scattered resources, due to which it appears expensive. The goal is to get them together and create a travel portfolio that can support you almost FREE Travel for years.
Tips to joining the Airline Loyalty Programs
Well, joining the various Airline Loyalty Programs is a pretty easy process. Below, I have shared the links to the websites to start off with. You can take your time and join these programs. Here are few tips to make sure you get all the travel services and mileage programs at one place:1. As far as possible, try creating a new email account and direct all the sign ups to that account. 2. Use only one valid Visa Debit/Credit Card for all transactions, so that you can evaluate the monetary expenses closely while calculating the reward points. Unless it gets too complicated for an online transaction, I advise that you try making all your travel transactions from a singular bank account. This will come handy when you have to redeem points using your card for various accounts. 3. Maintain a diary or excel file where you can closely monitor the miles you have been earning. Another awesome tool is the Tripit application. This app consolidates the miles from all the Airline Miles Programs into a single account. Whenever you make any travel related bookings, this application retrieves the data from your email and updates your itinerary. A powerful tool to organize your trips in the long run. There are several airline programs in existence today. Covering the mileage point systems of all of them may not be feasible and also get voluminous to the readers. So, I will try to keep the discussion generic so that you can extend the concept over the various loyalty programs. Notwithstanding that, I have also included a chapter specific to the Jet Privilege Program in order to work out the numbers for your convenience. You can use the
calculations as a reference point to start off with the other programs. The methods of accumulating points are different from one program to another, as also the points generated. Here, you need to evaluate and we will also see with practical examples in the end, how to compare which program gives more returns for you for the purpose of earning points so that you maximize your travel investments. As of now, to start off, here are the links of the travel programs I deal with.
1. Jet Airways Jet Privilege Program 2. Air Asia BIG Loyalty Points Program 3. Agoda.com 4. Payback.in 5. Oxigen.com Together, these programs allow me to earn up to 3000 to 4000 miles a month, simply by changing the way I spend on my monthly expenses. I believe that those expenses which are unrecoverable are a waste of your money. When such expenses take place, you often have to compromise on something you saved your money for so long, such as your new mobile phone or laptop or washing machine for instance. The other examples of unrecoverable expenses are as under:1. Utility Bills - Electricity, Gas, Water etc. 2. Mobile phone recharges and top ups 3. Books and magazines purchase 4. Medical bills 5. Weekend Expenses - Dining/ Entertainment
By smartly routing your expenses through these services, you not only pay your unrecoverable utility bills but also convert some portion of this expense into travel returns. Thus, not only are your expenses utilized in a smart way, they do not pinch you because you know at the end of the day, they are giving you a value accumulated over time. If you are disciplined enough, you can gain enough points at the end of the month to sponsor yourself a trip without spending anything from your pocket. You will learn subsequently how!!
SECTION -3
How to Earn Miles
When Flying and with Co-partnered Flights Earn While You Fly with Jet Airways Flights:-
You can earn miles from your Airline Miles programs by making your flight bookings through your Airline Program account. This ensures that you have made your booking using your membership no. only and the miles will then get credited to your account. Every airline uses different policies for calculating the miles credited in lieu of the flight bookings made. In the case of Jet Privilege, the program credits JP Miles to your account based on a factor called the TPM (Ticketed Point Mileage). The Ticketed Point Mileage is the distance in air miles from source airport to destination airport. Effective from 17th August 2016, the Jet Privilege Program credits miles which is equivalent to the air mile distances only. This means that if the distance between the source airport and destination airport is say 2000 air miles one way, then you get credited with 2000 miles on your booking for a one-way ticket. In case your ticket is round trip, then you should double the air mile distance and that is the number of miles credited to your JP Miles account. You can download a calculator I have compiled for you to check how much miles you can earn based on your bookings. At the end of the section, we will also see a complete example where we will use this table for calculating the miles earned on flight bookings.
Earn While You Fly with Co-Partnered Flights
I have not spoken about the even better part of an Airline Loyalty Program as yet. And that is, most airlines operate as co-partners. In the travel business, there are uncertainties involved and an airline cannot operate in isolation due to the dynamics and risks. This automatically necessitates the allied business services to align with each other across various airlines. The Airlines need to use co-branded services by virtue if the fact that they are restricted to fly between geographical areas and sectors within various countries. Also, they are bound by the Global Air Traffic Regulations as well as the trade agreements between the various nations that necessitate legal and operational bindings on the various flight services. Operating in partnerships allows flexibility of operations and extension of geographical reach from one country to another, which would otherwise become difficult, should they operate in isolation. When you create a membership account with one or more of the airline programs, you will invariably find the airlines listed in each other websites or strategic partnerships already
established. This is good as now your Frequent Flying Miles get inter convertible. This means that with a single membership no. you have the potential to use points with most of the airlines which are partnered with a particular airline program. Such an arrangement allows you to use and encash miles from one airline program with another, as long as they are partnered through business agreements. This also means that if you have more than one airline loyalty point accounts, you can use the miles of one program on another, to book your flights. How do you know that? Well, all the partner airlines are listed on your Mileage Program Website and you can choose which sector you are planning to fly. Once you select the airline and your destination, you can quote your Program Membership no. to be able to use the points for making a booking. Simple!
Tier Upgrades and Tier Miles This is a unique feature of the Jet Privilege Program only and may be different for different programs. Simply put, a tier upgrade means upgrading you as a traveller to avail more flying benefits based on your travel habits. The miles that you accumulate help you to fly more and give you tier upgrades. The tier upgrade helps you to unlock more benefits, accrue more miles in comparison to lower tiers and elongates the expiration periods. There are several more benefits and as you proceed with your programme, you will keep unlocking them on the go. This includes Bonus Miles and Tier Related Miles that doubles or even triples the number of miles you fly each time. You will find that with higher upgrades, the tier upgrade points become more than the base miles accrued due to flying. You need to either earn Tier Points or Tier Miles in order to upgrade yourself among the following categories:-
1. Blue – Beginner 2. Blue Plus – After earning 3500 Miles and completing at least 1 accrual activity 3. Silver 4. Gold 5. Platinum
The miles earned for purchasing flight tickets depend upon not the price but two factors called the ticketed point mileage (TPM) and Fare Choices. The TPM is the air-distance from source to destination airports. Fare choices indicate the category of the flight you choose for flying. The miles finally credited to your account is a product of the TPM and the percentages indicated in the miles category. The table below indicates the fare choices category and will give you a fair idea on how the Tier System calculation works:-
INDIAN SUBCONTINENT (India, Bangladesh, Nepal & Sri-Lanka)
Economy Fare Choices | Booking Classes
Première
Deal ( W, O)
Saver (V, H)
Classic (K, S, Q, L, N)
Flex (U, T, M, Y)
Saver (P)
Classic (I)
Flex (Z, J, C)
Base JP Miles
25%
50%
75%
125%
100%
100%
100%
Cabin Bonus JP Miles
-
-
-
-
25%
50%
75%
Tier Bonus JP Miles – Platinum Tier Bonus JP Miles –
75%
50%
Gold Tier Bonus JP Miles – Silver
25%
INTERNATIONAL
Economy Fare Choices | Booking Classes
Deal ( W, O)
Base JP Miles
Cabin Bonus JP Miles
Première
(V, H)
Classic (K, S, Q, L, N)
Flex (U, T, M, Y)
25%
75%
100%
-
-
-
Saver
(I)
Flex (Z, J, C)
(A, F)
100%
100%
100%
100%
50%
100%
150%
200%
Saver
Classic
(P)
150%
-
Tier Bonus JP Miles – Platinum
75%
Tier Bonus JP Miles – Gold
50%
Tier Bonus JP Miles – Silver
25%
First
To make it easier for you to understand and save your time from precious math calculations, I have put together an Excel Calculator with all the factors implemented to calculate the miles earned based on your air miles travelled. You can download these tables from here:Download the JP Miles Earned Calculator Download the JP Mileage Accrual Chart Use the Airmiles Calculator
First
While Being Grounded
You do not need to be necessarily flying all the time to earn miles, as you can continue earning points on your regular purchases also. And if you think the people who earn a lot of money, they do not use this method; it is a completely wrong perspective. People who earn more money are in fact smarter and they know how to extract more value out of every dollar they spend. That's what makes them better businessmen. The Airline Programs come with several such opportunities for you where you can keep accumulating points for yourself. Discussed below are some of the ways by which you can earn miles on your Jet Privilege Account. The miles mentioned are just the figures as on dates and are subject to change
with time. But you can gain a fair idea how you should earn points on your expenses.
Shopping Partners: The shopping partners provide you immense opportunities even when you are not traveling. This is where we need to focus the most as this is where you will maximize your miles earned per rupee spent. You can earn on shopping for electronics, clothes, books, accessories, leather, home decor, appliances, and everything that relates to your shopping list over the year. When you add all your annual shopping expenses together, this has the potential of earning you more than 50000 JP Miles on your account. This is the largest list of
opportunities for you, and if you use it intelligently, you will be almost halfway to earn yourself a FREE Trip.
Dining Partners: What if you can earn points for ordering your pizzas over the weekend? Why not earn when it can earn you a trip too, eventually. All you need to do is when you dine out on weekends, try to order or visit the restaurants listed on your account. If for some reason, they are not listed, do not worry - there is still a way out. Do you know that you can earn JP Miles for submitting reviews of the restaurants you dine in? Every month, I earn more than 600 Mileson my account just for submitting reviews on TripAdvisor.Tripadvisor credits
you 1500 miles monthly for submitting reviews on restaurants and dine outs. You can earn anywhere between 50 and 100 JP Miles per review that you submit. When you are about to submit a review, the hotel will show the logo of JP Miles next to the restaurant you have dined in and that will help you know how much you earned for your reviews. Go ahead, and show your expertise.
Staying with the Partner Hotels: Staying with the Partner Hotels lets you earn miles for using the partner services. When using the partner hotel services, you will be prompted to make a purchase through the Airline account. There are several hotel brands listed on the Jet Privilege Account such as the Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, IHG, and Shangri-La etc. to name a few. Apart from these, there are also several hotels booking websites listed on your account. These websites help you to earn points on your room bookings every time you book through these websites. What is more interesting is that not only do you earn by staying in these hotels but also earn by referring them to your friends. The following hotel booking websites are available in your Jet Privilege Account.
Booking.com
Agoda.com
Pointshound.com
Rocketmiles.com
Kaligo.com
The most powerful program among the five is undoubtedly the Rocketmiles. With its first booking itself, if gives you the opportunity to earn 4000 miles, and is the most liberal award points program among the ones mentioned above. For some of the hotels, it even gives you points near or equal to the booking amount. This means with your first booking itself, you score miles at least for a single one-way ticket to any of the domestic destinations. Use the JP Automated Mileage Calculator to find out how where all you can fly using these points.
Other useful ways to earn miles
There are several other useful ways to keep earning miles on your expenses. Your regular expenses have the capability of empowering you with thousands of miles every month, just without having to bother too much about earning them. Here is how you can earn miles on programs other than travel where you can convert your expenses into miles.
Payback Points Payback is an online shopping platform with a difference. It is a network of all the popular ecommerce shopping platforms from where you have already been shopping for a long time. Now you simply change the way you have been shopping from them, by earning flying miles for your shopping. Payback also has alliance with the Jet Privilege Program and allows you to convert the cash backs into miles. The best way to earn these points is to use the online wallet services. The Payback uses three online wallet programs – PayTM, Oxigen and Mobikwik. These services have Payback integrated into their mobile applications which automatically converts all your purchases or cash backs into Payback Points, without you being bothered to worry about the conversions. Finally, after you accumulate enough points, you have the choice of converting them into cash or miles. The advantage of earning points from Payback can be understood from this simple calculation. Suppose you have earned a 1000 Payback points from your online shopping and want to convert them into miles. You can convert these points into JP Miles from the Payback’s INFINITY REWARDS Section. Here 500 Payback points can be converted into 100
JP Miles. For 1000 Payback Points, you will earn:-
(100/500) X 1000 = 200 JP Miles. When you convert your payback points into cash @Rs. 0.25 per point, the value of 1000 points in cash is 1000 x Rs. 0.25 = Rs. 250/-. Your 1000 points also equate to 200 JP Miles.
Thus, you can also say that the value of 200 JP Miles is Rs. 250/- when converted to cash value. So Cost per JP Mile = Rs.250/200 - Rs. 1.25 per mile When purchasing these miles from your Airline program, the cost of each mile is also Rs. 1.25/-, but it also includes a 15% service tax on your purchase. Using the buy option, the cost of the same miles accumulated above would be:200 x Rs. 1.25 x 1.15 = Rs. 287.50/~ Rs. 1.5 per mile The payback points that you earn by using your Oxigen Wallet depend upon the products and services that you choose from Payback. In. Every time you choose a product from Payback. In and pay for it using your Oxigen Wallet, you earn payback points for it. Not only that, even if you do not, for any purchase that you do using your wallet, you will earn payback points in your account. All you need to do it is, try as much as possible to pay your amount using your e-wallet accounts.
Share your expert Reviews:When it comes to sharing expertise, no one can match the magnanimity of the Indian experts. We spend thousands of Rupees on weekends on dining, watching movies, and personal as well as family recreation. If you could spare your time to review them where you could earn Miles for your expert reviews, how would that be? You can earn Miles for sharing reviews of destinations, hotels, restaurants, things to do, places to see, and your city attractions and earn miles on a monthly basis. TripAdvisor and HolidayIQ are two such online services that allow you to make more than 2000 Miles per month for simply sharing your views on their websites. TripAdvisor allows you to share
views on almost anything related to your travel activities, whereas HolidayIQ only provides you with miles for sharing hotel video reviews using their mobile application. However, the miles earning potential through this is immense and surpasses the ones made by earning miles through e-wallet or other purchase methods. TripAdvisor also comes up with regular monthly review writing offer programs that let you earn more miles for limited periods. You must regularly check their Signup Page for the monthly offers. #Tip:1. You can also earn Miles by writing reviews on other Airlines Program. Just look out for the review writing options on your other Airline Loyalty Program Accounts. 2.
TripAdvisor follows strict review policies before publishing reviews on their websites. Make sure you post authentic reviews and follow the guidelines specified for good reviews.
3. Do not try to promote your personal websites, blogs while posting your reviews. Such reviews are not published and your account may be suspended. 4. You cannot earn miles for the same review on two or more different Airline Programs. 5. HolidayIQ earns you miles on video reviews by downloading their mobile App. But they keep coming up with exclusive miles earning offers that can increase the potential of earning more miles. Just subscribe to their email newsletters to stay updated.
SECTION - 4
How to Use Miles
Introduction: How to Use Your Miles
Well, you have earned enough points for yourself by now and it is time to redeem them for your trip. The even more fun part of accumulating your flying miles is about using them. When you have earned enough miles on your account, it is finally the time to book yourself the next trip. Interesting Right! Imagine having the power of the miles to sponsor your trips for long time. You have continued to consistently earn miles for yourself, on your annual essential expenses and now it is time to make use of them. Before you start using your miles, you must clearly understand the implication of the miles that you have earned and how they will be available to you. Here, I have only limited the scope to explaining JP Miles Account. This should give you a fair idea what to expect and how you should plan out using your miles for other programs too. The Jet Privilege Program allows you to spend your miles in the following ways:1. Redeem them for flights 2. Redeem miles for online shopping 3. Gift Miles When using your miles, the users often get confused about the fact whether they should use their miles or they should buy out the holidays in cash. The best way to understand this is to find out the cost per miles while booking your holidays in cash or using your miles. If buying out in cash gives you more value and also some miles to accrue for the later stage, you can use a combination of miles and cash to make your bookings. In the subsequent topics you will find Practical Examples where you can understand how to utilize the cost per mile while making your bookings. The most important redemption you can have is on the ability to buy out your flight tickets on your miles. Take a closer look at the tier upgrades when you try to book your flights. With higher tiers, you will earn more miles for the same category of flights and this will earn you more miles to continue flying. I suggest that for the initial periods, you try to redeem
miles only for flights and not on shopping. When you accrue enough miles or tier upgrades, you can have the choices of redeeming miles for shopping. You can always motivate your friends to join the program by gifting them with some JP Miles on their account. Remember, you cannot and must not charge money from anyone for sharing miles as this can completely suspend your account and accumulated miles. When you gift the miles from your account, you are charged with the transfer fees and the relevant service taxes applicable for making transfer. Also remember that miles once gifted are irrecoverable and non reversible.
Tip:1. Use your miles initially for booking flights only. 2. Start with accumulating miles by doing the other activities such as shopping, recharges ,buying books and writing reviews on TripAdvisor 3. You can also receive and send miles as gift to your friends to make them join the FF Program. 4. Do Not Sell the Miles you have accrued. You are not allowed to do that and your
account can be suspended. 5. Always compare the cost equivalent of miles when making a decision between miles and money for your travel bookings.
Expiry of Miles
Most of the miles that you earn on your account are available for you for a period of 3 years. This means that you can continue with your normal expenditure routine while earning your points up to 3 years before you start worrying about their expiry or losing them without usage.
If for some reason, you are not able to accumulate them fast enough, still, the points are available for use for 3 years, and you can take your time to keep earning them, especially in cases when you are planning International Travel. But, earning points on your annual expenses suffices you to earn enough points over the year. To use the loyalty points, you need to remember your membership no. and keep it handy at all times, as this is what you will need when you need to redeem flights for yourself.
Redeeming Miles on Flight Bookings
Your accumulated miles can earn you flight tickets starting as low as 5000 to 6000 Miles. This means you can book yourself a trip to any of the Indian destinations with them. For that, you need to know the following before you start doing so:1. You must accrue at least 3500 Miles on your account. 2. Complete at least two accrual activities from the whole list of activities on your account.
Redeeming miles for your flights is fairly simple and easy. Just follow the steps below and you should get through easily:-
Login to your Jet Privilege Account
Go to My Trips Section in your account.
From here, select the source and destination of your trip.
Once you are about to book your flight, you will see options on the booking form itself, indicating the redeem miles option for booking.
When choosing the Show Flights Option, simply select the Redeem Miles option and proceed for your bookings. This will show you flights based on not the amount, but the miles needed for your booking.
In case you get short of miles, you can initiate a part payment option by paying for the remaining amount through your online bank account.
Redeeming Miles on E-Commerce Purchases
You can use your earned miles for some essential shopping too. However, during the initial phase of your miles accrual, I suggest that you refrain from using the miles for ecommerce purchase unless it is more of a priority for you than accumulating miles for future flight bookings.
To make e-commerce purchases using miles, you can check them in the Use Miles Section from where you are directed to the merchandise section for the purchases.
Since the purpose of this e-book is to learn how to accrue miles for flight tickets and travel from shopping and not the other way round, we will check out the other ways you can redeem your miles.
Gifting Miles
This is an awesome feature to motivate others to join the Miles program, though please bear in mind, that you cannot sell these miles to anyone. The miles can be transferred to your friends as also they can transfer you when you are in need. Here are few points to remember when you gift miles to your friends
The gifted miles cannot be reversed, cancelled or redeposited which means the points once gifted out to the recipient will stay with them.
A 15% service tax applies as per Indian Tax Rules on the number of miles transferred effective 01 June 2016.
You can either purchase or use miles from your account to gift miles to your friends and family.
Different tier members have different limits of transferring miles.
JP Miles can only be transferred online and using a credit card.
It takes 48 hours to transfer miles from one account to another.
SECTION - 5
How to Make the Most Out of Your Miles
Track Your Miles using the Monthly Miles Calculator
While you keep earning your points, it is also essential to keep a track of the miles you have been earning. This is how, you will be able to relate the number of points or miles you are short of, while you book your trip in the end.
The best way to keep track of your points is to keep them on an Excel File. I suggest that you make it a monthly ritual to update your expenses and keep monitor how many miles you can make it out of them. Consider this as a game where you earn points for keeping a record of your expenses. And hey, it helps in two ways.
1. You become disciplined in your finances. 2. You are getting rewarded for keeping a record of your own expenses.
Isn't that fun for a change? But adding everything up at the end of the month and doing all mind- boggling calculations can be highly intriguing. So, I have prepared an Excel Calculator for you where I have prepared a sample expenses file. You can change the values (your expenses) and measure the results of your points earned. You can download the calculator from the link below:-
Download the Monthly Miles Calculator
Using this calculator is pretty simple and easy. The expenses and the corresponding miles are already fed into the sheet. Just input the monthly expenses and it returns you the miles earned on the expenses. The calculations already shown in the file refer to my expenses.
You can change the values depending upon your monthly budget and convert them into monthly miles. Continue doing this for about 6 months consistently and you can easily earn yourself a single round trip ticket for any of the domestic Indian destinations.
Generally, any domestic destination needs 6000 miles one way. This means that by the end of the year, you can sponsor yourself a free round trip air ticket for a domestic destination. Not only that, every time you fly using your miles or cash, you give yourself a tier upgrade which will climb you faster to the higher levels of the Miles Program. With higher levels, you can unlock more privileges on flights, such as access to private lounge, premium services, premium partnership programs and more.
This calculator will also help you to evaluate which of your expenses are earning you more points, so you can use it wisely and spend accordingly. For example, if you observe carefully, you will understand that there are more points accumulated when you purchase items of home electronics or festival shopping. Though earlier, you might have been restricting yourself from buying something a little more expensive, but, eventually, some part of it comes back to you, in the form of miles. That's a smart way of spending if something is eventually coming back to you for an expense.
Getting Value Out Of Your Points
Well, you have accumulated enough points and may feel the urge to use some of them for your first trip. Here's one important thing to know before you start doing that yet. No matter at what level of membership you are on, it is essential to understand this - how do you get value out of every rupee that you use?
Let us understand this by using a simple math here. For this purpose, let us try to understand this with a hypothetical example here: You are looking for a hotel booking from one of the hotel websites for your next holiday destination in say - Hong Kong. Let's say I choose two websites - Agoda and Rocketmiles for evaluating the miles earned for booking my trip. How can I estimate the value earned on my investment (expense)? Let us take the following parameters for your trip:-
1. No of PAX: 02 2. Duration of Stay: 4N/5D 3. Date from: 25/09/2016 to 29/09/2016 For this, let us check the rates and the miles offered by both the services. I am attaching a screenshot for the readers here:-
Agoda vs. Rocketmiles:The first option indicates the snapshot of rates available from Agoda website for the abovementioned dates and destination. Here in the case of the first option, the Agoda service is giving a rate of Rs. 8449/- per night whereas the same service is available for Rs. 9610/- per night. Let's put in some numbers in place to understand the math and calculate how much we can earn out of both the options:Agoda Option:-
1. Price per night
-
2. Number of Miles Given 3. Cost of 4N/5D
-
Rs. 8449/-
4. Cost per JP Mile
Up to 3200 JP Miles Rs. 8449 x 4 = Rs. 33,796/-
-
Rs. 33796/3200 = Rs. 10.56/Mile
-
Rs. 9610/- (average)
Rocketmiles Option:-
1. Price per night 2. Number of Miles Given 3. Cost of 4N/5D 4. Cost per JP Mile
-
Up to 3000 JP Miles Rs. 9610 x 4 = Rs. 38,440/-
-
Rs. 38440/3000 = Rs. 12.81/Mile
With the figures above, it is obvious that anyone would choose the first booking option. But here is the catch. The first option says 'Up to' 3200 Miles, whereas the second option says 3000 Miles. This implies that exactly 3200 Miles may not be earned or credited to your account. Let's go ahead and try booking both of them. Here goes the second set of snapshots:-
Here, in the first option, we notice that the 3200 Miles are available for a room rate of Rs. 10761/- per night at Agoda. In case of Rocketmiles, the room is available for the same rate
as mentioned before and the miles available are also 3000.
Hence the revised rates for Agoda can be worked out as:
1. Price per night
-
Rs. 10761/-
2. Number of Miles Given 3. Cost of 4N/5D
-
4. Cost per JP Mile
Up to 3200 JP Miles Rs. 10761 x 4 = Rs. 43,044/-
-
Rs. 43044/3200 = Rs. 13.45/Mile
This simply means that you should be selecting the second option where you are credited full miles for your investment rather than partial. You can also see that in the first option, you have the opportunity to earn 2550 Miles for an investment of Rs.9379/-. Let’s calculate this too and find out whether we can go for this or not.
1. Price per night
-
2. Number of Miles Given
Rs. 9379/-
Up to 2550 JP Miles
3. Cost of 4N/5D
-
Rs. 9379 x 4 = Rs. 37,516/-
4. Cost per JP Mile
-
Rs. 37516/2550 = Rs. 14.71/Mile
So as you can see, even this option is not lucrative, though it might seem that the room rates are lower, but the cost per mile is higher for both the options of Agoda when compared to Rocketmiles.
These are figurative and have been calculated on real time situation just to explain how the calculations work. It is nothing to prove that one service is better or worse, cheap or expensive than the other. It just allows us to make the right choices when booking the same property from different places.
SECTION - 6
Practical Examples
The Math behind the Points
I understand it is far too easy to accept it that easily. So I decided to put some numbers in place to make you understand how you are benefitting out of your Loyalty Program. Let’s take a rough example here. #Example: You are planning an International Trip to Bangkok at the end of this year and your budget is approximately Rs. 25,000 per pax for two persons. L et’s say, your monthly household budget runs at Rs. 20000 per month. How much miles to expect at the end of the year so that you cut down your travel budget by exactly 50% or even more? #Step-1: Accruing your Miles Let’s say here that you are a member of t he Jet Privilege Program. This is how you can plan your expenses to convert to points by the end of the year. Let’s break up your monthly
expenses of Rs. 20000/- in some figures:Expenses
Points
Electricity Bill Mobile Recharge Cable Recharge Home Electronics* Weekend expenses Medical Expenses
Books & Magazines Groceries
Amt/Yr Rs.
3/Rs.100/3/Rs.100/3/Rs.100/10/Rs.100/3/Rs.100/15/Rs.100/-
Festival Shopping*
Amt/Mo Rs.2000/Rs. 1000/Rs. 1000/-
Miles/mo
Miles/yr
24000/-
60
720
Rs. 6000/-
30
360
Rs. 6000/-
30
360
417
5000
60
720
150
1800
208
2500
30
360
150
1800
1135
13620
Rs.
Rs.
50000/-
50000/-
Rs.
Rs.
2000/-
24000/-
Rs.
Rs.
1000/-
12000/-
Rs. 10/Rs.100/3/Rs.100/3/Rs.100/-
25000/-
Rs.25000/-
Rs.
Rs.
1000/-
12000/-
Rs.
Rs.
5000/-
60000/-
Total Miles Accumulated
* The Onetime expenses have been spread over the year to calculate the monthly miles earned on your expenses. One Mile on Purchase Costs Rs. 1.5/- to Rs.2/-* depending upon the months of booking. ________________________________________________________________________ #Step-2: Planning your trip using miles To plan your Bangkok Trip, let us check the end of the year rates from our Jet Privilege Account. Let us once again summarize the travel plan as under:1. Date of Travel:
11th Dec 16 to 15th Dec 16
2. No of PAX:
02
3. Total Budget of Trip:
Rs. 50,000/- (@ Rs. 25000/Pax)
4. Miles accrued until year end:
13620
5. Origin of Trip:
Mumbai International Airport
6. Duration of Trip:
4N/5D
The flight rates as available for the period are given below.
Onward Trip:-
Return Trip:-
From the above snapshots, you can see that the flights chosen are Economy Saver Class in the Economy Fare. This gives us a round trip airfare of Rs. 25114/- per person for the trip. Converting the accrued miles of 13620 into cash, we get:1. Cash available for trip
= Rs. 50000/-
2. Flight Expenses
= Rs. 50228/-
(a) Flight expenses paid from Miles- (13620* 1.5)
= Rs. 20430/-
(b) Flight Expenses in Cash
= Rs. 29798/-
3. Remaining Cash for trip - (Rs. 50000 - Rs. 29798)
= Rs. 20202/-
4. Hotel Expenses @Rs1500/Ni on Twin Sharing
= Rs. 6000/-
5. Sightseeing @Rs. 2000 per day
= Rs. 8000/-
6. Visa on Arrival @Rs. 2000 per Pax
= Rs. 4000/-
7. Miscellaneous
= Rs. 2000/-
8. Total Expenses in Cash
= Rs. 49798/-
The story does not end here yet!! What about the miles you earn for booking your entire trip from your Jet Privilege Account. Let’s find out how many miles you are returned after the end
of the trip.
Flights:1. Flying Miles Earned for the trip: The frequent flying miles credited to your account is calculated by using the two factors – TPM and Fare Choices, as discussed before.. First let us see how much miles are earned for this trip:(a) TPM
-
(b) Fare Choices -
1885 (Air Miles = 1885 Use the Airmiles Calculator) Economy Saver (Thus you receive 75% on Base Miles)
(c) Since TPM> 500, your miles are calculated on actual miles – 1885 miles (d) 75% of 1885 = 1414 Miles (One Way); Hence Two Way Miles = 2828 Miles 2. Tier Upgrade: Since you are also boarding a flight, you are also eligible for a tier upgrade. The tier upgrades are available every time you board the flight. Since you are taking a return flight, you are boarding the flight twice hence you are eligible for a tier grade point twice.
The tier points are scaled from 1 to 5, and higher the cost of the flight, the more the points for tier upgrades. Suppose you took the First Class Flight thrice in a year, you will get 5 points for a one way trip each time you board the flight, and the total tier points will be 15. Thus in just 3 flights itself, you will climb the higher tier, from Blue Plus to Silver. To know the tier points that you earn for this trip, we need to refer to the tier point Table. Since you have chosen the International Flight with a Fare Choice as the Economy
Saver Class, the category of the flight is either V or H. Hence, you get one tier point for one flight. For your return flight you earn another tier point, which adds up to 2 Tier Points for this trip. Depending upon which level you are in, you can find out how much miles you gained from the trip.
Hotels:-
1. Booking your hotel from the partner airlines earns you the following:(a) Booking.com
-
4Miles/Rs. 100-
(b) Agoda
-
300 Miles (Minimum Earned)
(c) For Rs. 6000/- the miles earned from (a) – (6000/100) X4 = 240 Miles. (d) So, you can choose Agoda for booking your hotel.
You can also refer to the example for hotel booking we used earlier before you decide the hotel services to choose.
Finally, all your earnings can be summarized in the table as under:-
Travel Cost/item
Class
Rs.25114 /-
Economy(Saver)
Air Miles
Miles Earned
Remarks
Itinerary
Flights
Use the JP Mile TPM Chart
1885 Use an
2828 Miles* (Use
1414
the JP Miles Earned
Miles
Air Mile Calculator to find Calculat
out)
Earned one way
or When booked
Hotels
Rs. 6000/-
-
-
300 Miles
using Agoda in this case
Sightseeing
Rs. 7000/-
-
On Personal
-
Expenses 160 Miles
International Calls
Rs. 2000/-
-
-
Total Miles Earned for this trip
3288 Miles/Pax
Cash equivalent of miles earned
Rs. 4932/- per Pax
Thus, for this entire trip, you have also returned yourself another 3000 Miles worth approximately Rs. 5000/- over and above your budget. On a budget of Rs. 50000/- your miles have saved you (Rs. 20430 + Rs. 4932 = Rs. 25362/-) and the actual expense in cash on your trip is Rs.50000 – Rs. 25362 = Rs. 24638. Further, you have also earned enough miles to add to your next trip. Here, you can also see that irrespective of the fact that you buy the flight tickets with a part payment of miles and cash (Rs. 50228/-), you still earn the miles for the entire trip and not valued on pro-rata basis. For more trips, the returned miles and tier points will keep increasing your privileges, and the cash component reduces further.
#Tip:1. Miles earned on flights are irrespective of cost of flight and depend upon the air mile distance from source to destination airport. 2. You earn a tier point every time you board a flight. For a round trip flight, you will earn tier points for both onward and return flights. 3. There is more potential to earn miles on your hotels than booking flights. Always compare between hotels to earn more value from your bookings. 4. You will also earn miles apart from tier points for boarding flights using the miles earned. Do not forget to calculate and redeem them after the trip. 5. A standard upgrade from one level to another is available for 12 months. Try to orient your funds to accumulate and upgrade over a year to maximize benefits. 6. As you climb up the tiers, the dynamic tier in Jet Privilege gives you more points in the tier than the actual Bas JP Miles. Try upgrading as fast as you can. .
DIY Exercises Here, you can deal with certain examples where you can learn with some real time examples and see how you can earn miles for yourself? 1. You are looking for a domestic trip to Kerala for 4N/5D and your budget is Rs. 2000 per night. Booking.com is giving you 4Miles/Rs. 100/- spent and Rocketmiles is giving you 800 Miles for your favourite hotel booking. Which option would you choose? 2. You are a member of Jet Privilege as well as Air Asia BIG Points Program. You want to book a flight to Singapore from one of the following srcin Indian Airports from where the round trip flight fares are given as under:-
Origin
Jet Airways
Air Asia
Kolkata
Rs. 25990/-
Rs.23480/-
Hyderabad
Rs. 27860/-
Rs. 24550/-
Chennai
Rs. 24410/-
Rs. 22110/-
Check which program will earn you more points / JP Miles for the bookings you make from these srcins. What will be the cost per mile for each flight? 3. Find the miles earned by traveling by Jet Airways flight from Mumbai to New Delhi as per the details below:(a) Round Trip Flight (b) Fare Choice – Classic (c) TPM – Find the TPM using the Air Mile Calculator (d) Member Tier – Silver
How much is the Base JP Miles? How much is the tier bonus? How much is the total miles earned? Use the JP Miles Earned Calculatorto check the values. 4. You are planning to book a hotel at Macau from Rocketmiles at a budget of Rs. 2000 per night for 4N/5D. One of the hotels is giving you 3000 Miles for Rs. 2200 per night and the other hotel is giving 2500 Miles for Rs. 1950 per night. Which hotel will you choose to earn more cost effective miles?
5. Use the same itinerary in Q4. and compare the miles earned on two different hotels from the same website. Do the calculation for the following services:(a) Agoda (b) Pointshound (c) Kaligo You have an account on both PayTM andOxigen Wallet. The first warns says up to 3 Payback Points per Rs. 100 and the second one says 2 PP per Rs. 100/- Which one should you choose for your points earning and why? 6. You are planning a trip to Andaman Nicobar Islands in the middle of this year for 2 PAX. You plan to take the trip from Kolkata. Your budget for this trip is Rs. 25000/per person. Answer the following questions? (a) How many miles per person are required for a round trip flight? (b) How many miles do you earn at the end of this trip after taking the round trip flight? (c) How many tier points do you earn for this trip? For all the questions, please consider the lowest economy class airfare under the Economy Deal Category. 7.
You have accrued 3000 Payback Points for your shopping on the Oxigen Wallet. How will you convert those points into JP Miles? Find out the steps and note it on a WordPad.
8. How much miles will you earn if you are in the Gold Tier and you take a round trip flight from New Delhi to Paris with the Fare Choice as the Economy Flex. How many tier points will you earn? How many total Miles do you earn from this transaction? 9. You travel from New Delhi to Malaysia on Air Asia Flight .How many Air Asia BIG Points will you earn for the flight. Try the same combination with Jet Airways. Compare the transactions? Which cost per mile is lesser? Which one would you choose to make your booking after comparison?
10. Select a sector of your choice. Now find out how many Air Asia BIG Points you can earn by booking hotels in that sector from Pointshound and Rocketmiles.
SECTION - 7
In the End...
Summarizing the Miles Game Achieve your long-term travel goals
One can easily start to earn miles simply by changing the way he has been spending his money so far. The airline miles programs are revolutionary ways to fund or pool in some portion of your income to fund yourself for a long term travel goal It may initially seem intriguing with all the complicated calculations but frankly speaking, the program has been put together for people who are ready to go all-in for their travel dreams. When we speak of a long-term travel goal, it is essential to understand the realities, especially the realities involved in the life on the road. The very first hurdle that comes in the way of long-term travellers is the ‘Finance’ and believe me, that can make or break ones decision to pursue the goal at all. The miles programs come to rescue to the extent that they are small pennies you keep aside in a more ‘non-spendable’ electronic form to keep funding you eventually when you start
pursuing your journey.
Create a Travel Mindset: Travel makes you disciplined in lot of ways due to the uncertainties it comes with. In fact, it is the ability of an individual to deal with uncertainties and eventually rise above them that makes a person more confident. The Airline Miles program, especially without a credit card, creates a mindset that helps you organize your necessary expenses. It helps you to decide what to buy and what not, and how you can even earn benefits out of the most trivial expenses.
Take Actions: More often than not, it is the apprehension to push the ‘Start Button’ that ke eps you on the shore. Applicable to almost all things in life, the logic well applies here too. You do not know where you will reach unless you start walking. This book may not be the answer to all the
questions, and I did not intend it to be, or else you would never have at least thought of starting to walk. The idea was to create a parallel line heading a certain distance which at least looked like a road to start off with. If you look back, you will realize that for almost years, you had been spending your money on a ‘reactive mindset’, little realizing that all that you earn for yourself, is eventually going to someone else, with very little or no use to you. The Airline Miles Programs are one such opportunity out of many, which are often in front of our very eyes, but we are too bogged down to pay the non-recoverable bills. Here, you now know that something is always recoverable and useful for your life. It is only about taking action. With a focussed set of actions and disciplined approach, you can create yourself a virtue gradually over a period of time. Think of it as an investment unknowingly created out of your irrecoverable expenses. For creating a financial portfolio, you often need to invest or park your funds somewhere, without using them for a long time to earn substantial gains. Here, all that you spend is eventually getting converted into an investment, without even keeping you up with the liabilities on the already paid bills. So, take action to make the most of it.
Travel More: Had you ever thought that your expenses too could be a goldmine? Indians understand the value of gold, no matter how trivial the amount may be. Consider these opportunities as gold deposits that will earn you without any extra investment. You are not required to put anything additional from your pocket for the expenses you make on a monthly basis, yet you are returned certain portion of the expenses just because you have decided to change the way you spend. These small gold deposits eventually pave the way for you to travel more, without being bothered about your budget anymore. Now, most of the budget is recovered from your monthly expenses, so that you do not have to compromise upon your holidays, at the last moment.
A Token of Thanks
Finally, I thank you once again to download and take your precious time to read this e-book. I hope you found the book interesting and have questions, queries and doubts. I have them too, especially such as:1. How did you find the contents of the e-book? 2. Will you recommend /share it with your friends? 3. How was the language and flow of the book? 4. Were you able to understand or relate to the various topics discussed here? 5. Will you be interested to join an exclusive Air mile Club? 6. Have you ever tried using an Airline Miles Program Before?
I sincerely look forward to your feedback on this e-book and wish to know how you found the book to be. Please feel free to point out even the smallest mistakes so that I get to learn and improve more and come up with more improvements in the later versions. Please write your suggestions to:Email:
[email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Glossary of Terms A Accrual: Miles earned due to activity (ies) done as listed on the particular miles program
account for the purpose of accumulating miles.
Affiliate: Business agreement between various online businesses to promote the products available on the partner websites using a unique code linking to the partner. Agoda: Hotel Booking Website Airline: The Aircraft or the company referred to for flight bookings Air Asia BIG Points: The Air Asia Flying Miles Program where miles are accrued in BIG Points. Airline Loyalty Points: A generic term for all the Airline Miles programs in existence.
Air Mile Calculator: Helps you to calculate the air distance between the source and the destination airports. ___________________________________________________________________________
B Base JP Miles: The minimum miles earned for flying with the Jet Privilege and its co-
partnered flights. BIG Points: The term used for flying miles in case of the Air Asia Miles Program. Blue/Blue Plus Tier: Tier categories in the Jet Privilege Program with Blue Tier being the
lowest of all. Blue Plus tier is the immediate tier after the Blue Tier earned after indicated accrual activity. Booking Class: Refers to the price category of flights based on the Economy/Premiere/First
Class flight preferences. Booking.com: Partner hotel website with most of the Airline Loyalty Programs helping you
earn miles when you book hotels through the Airline Miles Account.
British Airways Executive Club: Flying Miles or Avios Program by British Airways Business Class: The category of ticket choice selected for booking flight tickets from Jet
Privilege Account. This allows travellers to earn miles based on the fare choices for flight bookings. Business Class has more privileges and is especially for the Business Class passengers.
C Cabin Bonus: Bonus earned based on tiers applicable only on premier Domestic and
International Flights in Jet Privilege Program Classic: Classic is the higher middle range category in the Economy Class which earns 75%
on Domestic and 100% of Base JP Miles on International Flight Bookings Co-partnered Flights: Airlines partnered with Jet Airways that allow you to use JP Miles and
fly on the partner airlines. You simply need to mention your Jet Privilege Membership number before confirming the bookings. Credit Cards: Bank Cards associated with partnered banks that allow you to accrue sign-up
as well as usage points to be converted into Flying Miles. Most of the Frequent Flying Miles are based on using memberships of several credit cards and banking partnerships, although that is not so lucrative in the Indian context. ___________________________________________________________________________
D Deal: Deal is the lowest category in the Economy Fare Choice and earns 25% of the Base JP
Miles on Domestic and International sectors on booking the flights. Destinations: Locations both Domestic and International that are covered under the various
Flying Miles Programs for the purpose of crediting Flying Miles to the travellers. Dining Partners: This Include a list of restaurants that are affiliated to the Flying Miles
Programs or airlines for the purpose of accruing flying miles.
Domestic: Pertains to the destinations within the country. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E Earn Miles: Flying Miles credited to your Miles account for various accrual activities
available on the Flying Miles Account. E-Commerce: One of the several ways of earning miles by using the partner e-commercial
websites of any Flying Miles Program to accrue or redeem miles while you shop. Economy Class: The category of ticket choice selected for booking flight tickets from Jet
Privilege Account. This allows travellers to earn miles based on the fare choices for flight bookings. Expiry of Miles: Refers to the accrued miles which are available for a duration after which
they become invalid. The miles generally are available for 3 years from the date of accrual and expire on a quarterly basis and not as on date basis. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
F Fare Choice: Fare choices are the list of the various fare categories available while making a
flight booking. The fare choice is also a parameter to decide how many miles are accrued for a particular flight booking transaction, after valued with TPM. First Class: The category of ticket choice selected for booking flight tickets from Jet Privilege
Account. This allows travellers to earn miles based on the fare choices for flight bookings. First Class has more privileges and is especially for the Business Class passengers. Flex: Flex is the highest category in the Economy Class Airfares and earns 100% on Domestic
and 125% on the International Flight Bookings from the Jet Privilege Partner Program. Flying Miles: Flying Miles are the miles or points accrued due to flying activities done on
various programs.
Frequent Flying: It is a term used for travellers who frequently use flying as the means of
travel for leisure or business purposes on a regular basis.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------G Gift Miles: The process or facility of transferring a specific number of miles through online
account to friends and relatives from one Flying Mile account to another. Gold Tier: Tier categories in the Jet Privilege Program with Blue Tier being the lowest of all.
Blue Plus tier is the immediate tier after the Blue Tier earned after indicated accrual activity. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
H Hotels: Here, the hotels refer to any travel property listed on the partner hotel or hotel
booking websites for accrual of miles on booking. HolidayIQ: Travel Review website that earns you miles for sharing video reviews of hotels
from their mobile app. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I INFINITY REWARDS: Reward points program by Payback. in for earning Payback Points on
their program. International: Refers to destinations or locations covered outside the Indian Subcontinent. Itinerary: Refers to travel plan that is self-made from the Airline Miles programs.
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J Jet Privilege: The Airline Miles Program by Jet Airways which credits miles for activities to
the Jet Privilege members for using the services on their Jet Privilege account.
JP Miles: Flying miles earned by the Jet Privilege members as a result of performing
activities or transactions from their Jet Privilege Account. JP Miles TPM Chart: The JP Mileage accrual chart helps you to check how many miles you
earn based on the already listed Ticketed Point Mileage (TPM) JP Automated Mileage Calculator : Helps you to find out where all you can fly using the
miles earned in your Jet Privilege Account. JP Miles Earned Calculator: Helps you to calculate how many miles you can accrue based on
your present tier, Fare Choices, Cabin Class and TPM when you book a flight with the Jet Airways using your Jet Privilege Membership account. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
K Kaligo: Hotel booking partner website listed on most of the Airline Miles Programs that help
you to earn 1000 Miles as sign up bonus immediately on sign up. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
L Loyalty Points: Points earned especially for your stay in Airline Miles Program partnered
hotels, which can be converted in to Airline Miles after completing the stay in the hotel. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
M Monthly Miles Calculator: Use this calculator to monitor the miles accumulated for your
expenses on a monthly basis. Gives you a fair idea how many miles you can earn by the end of the year, and also how to plan your essential expenses accordingly to earn miles at the end of the year. Miles: The miles earned refer to the points earned for booking flights or doing other
activities using the Airline Mile Partner Programs. Also referred to as Airline Miles, it is the cash equivalent required to book flights at a later stage for more travel activities.
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N --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------O Oxigen Wallet: Oxigen wallet is affiliated to Payback Points Program for accruing Payback
Points which can be converted and redeemed as JP Miles at a later stage. All transactions require uploading e-cash on Oxigen Wallet Mobile App and then doing the transactions. The Points redemption is instantaneous and the PP is immediately credited to the account.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------P Payback points: Points earned for making e-commerce purchases through the Payback. In
website. The points can be earned on almost all products listed on the Payback website and can be redeemed for earning JP Miles @ 5 PP = 1JP Mile. PayTM Wallet: PayTM is also associated with Payback Program for accruing Payback Points
which can be converted and redeemed as JP Miles at a later stage. Pointshound: Hotel website partnered with most of the Airline Miles Programs that gives a
traveller a 1000 Points sign up bonus immediately on sign up. Premiere Class: The category of ticket choice selected for booking flight tickets from Jet
Privilege Account. This allows travellers to earn miles based on the fare choices for flight bookings. Premiere Class has the highest travel privileges and tier upgrades and is especially for the Business Class passengers, although even regular passengers can use it for an instant upgrade in the initial stages. Purchase Miles: The JP Miles can be purchased from your account @ Rs. 1.25 per mile and
15% service taxes applicable. For miles purchased over 3000, you can earn more bonus points of 40% or above. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------R Rocketmiles: Hotel website partnered with most of the Airline Miles Programs that gives a
traveller a 1000 Points sign up bonus immediately on sign up. Referral Bonus: Is the bonus earned in miles or points for referring others to join the various
Airline Miles Partner Programs. Redeeming Miles: Earning benefits due to miles earned from various accrual activities. The
Miles can be redeemed for flights, hotels, shopping etc. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
S Saver: Classic is the lower middle range category in the Economy Class which earns 50% on
Domestic and 75% of Base JP Miles on International Flight Bookings Shopping: Refers to e-commerce purchases which include but are not limited to home
electronics, leather, fabric, metals, household items and items that earn you miles when the shopping activity is performed through the Airmiles Partner Program Account. Silver Tier: The third privilege tier in the JP Miles program that earns you miles on based on
Base JP Miles and Tier Bonus calculated on the Fare Choices and the TPM. Swipe: Using the Airline Mile Partnered Credit Cards for making purchases from the
partnered services and products.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------T Tier: It is the method used in the JP Miles Program to define the various levels of travellers
based on how frequently and what category of flights are used by the travellers. The tier helps gain more miles based on the position where the traveller is at present and over time, the Tier Bonus received surpasses the Base JP Miles.
Tier Points: Tier points are points earned for flying with the category of the flights listed on
the JP Miles program. The tier points lie between 1 and 5, and is listed from lowest to highest. The tier points are earned and calculated per flight depending upon the fare choice and TPM of the flight. Tier Upgrade: Tier upgrade is the escalation of the membership from one tier to another
depending upon how many times the traveller has flown with the airline. When using tier upgrade, the choice is taken between either miles earned or tier points earned whichever is earned earlier. Ticketed Point Mileage (TPM): This is the basis for calculation of miles earned on flights.
The TPM is calculated based on the air miles flown by the particular flight from source airport to destination airport and allows a minimum of 500 TPM for flights flown less than or equal to 500 miles. The table below will give a brief idea on how the TPM is calculated. • 'Fare Choices': The Fare you choose under the new fare structure
• Distance Flown: For Distance (Ticketed Point Mileage) <= 500 Miles, JP Miles will be
calculated on minimum 500 miles and basis 'Fare Choices' For Distance >=501 Miles, JP Miles will be calculated as per actual distance flown (TPM) and basis 'Fare Choices'
Jet Airways code Distance Flown
Jet Airways marketed & Operated Flights /
share flights
Jet Airways marketed flights under S2 code
operated by Airline Partners
0 to 500 Miles
500 JP Miles
>= 501 Miles
Actual Distance Flown (TPM)
Actual Distance Flown (TPM)
Actual Distance Flown (TPM)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------U --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------V --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------W ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------X ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Y -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Z ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Useful Travel Resources
Other Useful Travel Resources:Below listed are the links to some of the most popular Miles Programs that can help you start off accumulating your own miles. Use these programs to keep earning miles every month on your travel and other activities.
Flight Programs:1. Jet Privilege 2. Air Asia BIG Points Program 3. Lufthansa – Miles & More Program 4. British Airways Executive Club 5. Virgin Atlantic
Hotel Programs 1. Accor Hotels Points Program 2. Agoda 3. Best Western 4. Booking.com 5. Carlson Rezidor 6. Homestay 7. Hotelscombined 8. Hyatt 9. IHG 10. Kaligo 11. Pointshound 12. Rocketmiles 13. Small Luxury Hotels 14. Taj Inner Circle
Trip Planners: 1. Bus Online Booking 2. Govoyagin 3. My Private Travel 4. Viator 5. Real Adventures
Allied Travel Services 1. Easy Cabs 2. Shuttle Direct – Airport Shuttle Service 3. International Vacation Home Exchange
Shopping Programs 1. Payback 2. EMI Bazaar 3. Oxigen Wallet 4. The Mobile Store
