Air India is upgrading its Maharaja Club from April 1, 2026. Members will need fewer points for reward flights across all cabins, get more flexible cancellation policy, easier tier upgrades, and extended companion benefits.
Let’s focus on redemption levels in this article and see how they’ve improved across cabins and routes.
Table of Contents
Economy Redemptions
Economy redemptions are now very much affordable across sectors.
Among the changes, international economy stands out as the most lucrative. You can now fly to many Asian destinations for around 12K points, even Bali on an 8-hour flight, which is insane value.
Business Class Redemptions
Business class redemptions too are now much more affordable, especially for domestic routes.
While international business class has improved, it’s still relatively high, especially for Europe when compared to Star Alliance alternatives like Singapore Airlines or Air Canada.
Many of these programs also throw in an extra leg, making them a no-brainer in several cases. For instance, I flew BLR–BOM–FRA on Air India’s all new 787-9 Business Class for under 70K Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles, while Air India’s own program still demands 100K points and considerably more in taxes.
So it would be nice if Air India comes up with better redemption rates for Europe, and a free domestic connection when booking international sectors, at least for shorter connections, similar to how Finnair operates.
Cancellation and rescheduling
The cancellation/rescheduling policy is now tier-based as below:
Platinum members get an excellent perk with free cancellations up to 2 hours before departure, while Gold members also enjoy solid benefits.
Outside the specified windows, a flat 25% fee applies. This will be charged in cash for rescheduling, or deducted as Maharaja Points for cancellations. No-show bookings remain non-refundable as per existing policy.
Bottomline
Air India’s award redemptions have dropped significantly across ~90% of routes, bringing them largely in line with most global loyalty programs.
So it now makes sense to transfer Credit Card points to Air India as the point value gets as good as 1INR in many cases and even more at times.
Now that the ground is all set, it’s time for the Air India Maharaja Club Credit Cards to go live, for the whole program to truly take flight.
After seeing this article and getting to know that Accor has been dropped from transfer partners, I booked 2 round-trip tickets to Bali and got value of INR 3.80 per Axis Edge Mile. Thank you for this article.
This is very helpful. Thanks for sharing.
Sid you are invincible, as usual seamless report on overall scenario. Thanks for this wonderful article. Looking forward to regain gold status in air india. Any CC launched will be taken immediately
It was a good news from AI when compared to the brutal devaluation done by Axis, have expected Air India to launch the new Maharaja Club co-branded credit cards in April which was long time due.
First good news in the Miles sector in 2026 but still most of the domestic flights are operated by Air India Express and there we wont be able to redeem Maharaja points & in the meantime Accor has been removed from Axis transfer partner list
AI Express would soon join the program. I guess they might actually do that first before launching the CC.
Yeah, Axis dramas up again!