Jet Airways offering bonus frequent flyer miles till March-end

Jet Airways is luring customers on its website by offering bonus frequent flyer miles till March-end.

While airlines are discounting seats to fill flights in a lean season, Jet is offering extra miles as an incentive for customers to book on its website. The move is aimed to help expand its web sales and loyalty programme membership (5.5 million at present), beside saving on sales and distribution cost — when a ticket is booked on its website, an airline does not have to pay commission and bonus to travel agents. Also, it can save on fees paid to global distribution systems, used by agents to book tickets. At present, about a quarter of all Jet tickets are sold through its website or mobile app.

Under the 'billion miles festival' scheme, customers will be entitled to an additional 1,500-10,000 miles for each flight and get a chance to win a million miles in a lottery. The scheme is open to all existing and new members of the frequent flyer programme. Customers need to book and travel by March as part of the scheme.

The bonus miles will make redemption quicker and reduce the number of trips a customer would need to earn a free one.

Explaining the offer, Jet's vice president (commercial) Praveen Iyer said the number of trips required to earn free ticket could even get halved, as a customer is now assured of a regular number of frequent flyer miles, an extra 250 miles for booking on website and a bonus of 1,500-10,000 miles under the scheme till March 31. Iyer said the offer was largely aimed at the leisure segment and denied it was launched due to growing competition from Air India or Vistara.