Air India American Express Green
CancelA lakh of flying, one free return — and not a single point in between.
no published earn rate to price
Skip the arithmetic — the board, ranked → · nothing to sign up for
What it's worth to you, after the fee
Not valued. We can't value this card until the issuer publishes a fee schedule AND an earn table — we have neither number, so there is nothing to net off against nothing. Everything we can source — the fee, the charges, the migration that put this card in your hand — is above and stands on its own; this card is simply not on the board, not in the calculator, and cannot win a best-of call until American Express publishes terms we can cite.
Why we decline to value some cards, and what it takes to change that →
2 notes on the card itself: how it is issued · why it ranks #954
Why #954 The charge half of Amex's Air India co-brand: a lakh of flying bought a Dubai return or a domestic one, and full-fare Economy came 15% off. No Membership Rewards at all — the tickets were the whole reward. Carried for the record.
The take
This is the charge-card half of American Express's Air India co-brand, and it is the purer of the two: no rewards programme, no accelerator, no catalogue. What you got was the flying. Charge ₹1,00,000 to the card on AI or CD coded flights over twelve months and you took either an Award Economy return to Dubai or an Award Economy return anywhere on Air India's domestic network. That threshold is itself a piece of history — the page records it as a REVISED limit applying to travel log forms received after 1 July 2011, up from the ₹75,000 the co-brand's credit-card sibling still advertised. A withdrawn card is priced at the last rate its issuer published, and on this page that rate is a lakh. The discount ladder was the better of the two halves as well: fifteen per cent off normal full-fare Economy and ten per cent off normal full-fare Business, on domestic sectors and on IATA fares internationally. The credit sibling published the Economy line only. Everything else is standard old-Amex: global validity with no pre-set spending limit, air accident cover to ₹50 lakh, a free supplementary card, free Flying Returns membership for anyone not already enrolled — with the extra baggage, priority confirmations and telephone check-in that came with it — and a dedicated toll-free card and travel helpline. Read the two halves together and the choice was structural rather than about rewards. If you wanted to revolve a balance and collect Membership Rewards you took the credit card; if you wanted no spending ceiling and the better fare discount you took this. It is carried and not ranked because Amex published neither a fee nor an accrual for it, and because Indian Airlines, Air India's Flying Returns programme and this partnership have all since gone.
Your renewal — keep, downgrade or cancel
There is no renewal arithmetic to run on this card yet — and a break-even we cannot source is not one we will print.
the whole desk — what changed, the downgrade, and what we cannot price →
Keep, downgrade or cancel
what we can and cannot price
Not valued. We can't value this card until the issuer publishes a fee schedule AND an earn table — we have neither number, so there is nothing to net off against nothing. A break-even is the spend at which value crosses a fee, and we are short one side of that sentence — so this desk prints no ladder, no crossing and no ₹0 standing in for either. What we can source about this card is under Sources.
Your copy of this card
You hold this card.
Kept on this device, in your browser. It is never sent to us, never synced, and nothing else on the site reads it yet.
The downgrade
American Express publishes no document naming a card you can step down to, so we name none — an invented product change is a phone call you would waste. That leaves keep or cancel, and we cannot price either side of it.
What has changed under this card
- 30 Sep 2026 Amex India discontinues Reward Multiplier — the whole 5X/3X/2X ladder issuer-wide
- 28 Aug 2026 Amex India pauses new card applications across the entire portfolio issuer-wide
- 18 Aug 2026 Amex India re-rates Virgin Atlantic upward — 2:1 becomes 5:4, the first MR buff in years issuer-wide
We price what is in force today — a change that has not happened yet is not in these numbers. the full archive for this card →
If you call to cancel
What the bank offers to keep you is the one fact this desk cannot compute. We are collecting those reports — dated, and only in aggregate — before publishing any: an offer one reader was made is not one you are owed. Called about this card? Tell us what they offered →
The desk publishes subscribable .ics feeds for the dates it knows — offer deadlines, devaluations, expiry audits. Your renewal date is not one of them: only your statement knows it.
What's good
- A complimentary Award Economy return to Dubai, or anywhere on Air India's domestic network, for ₹1,00,000 of AI or CD coded flying in twelve months
- 15% off normal full-fare Economy and 10% off normal full-fare Business, domestically and on IATA fares internationally
- No pre-set spending limit, with charges approved against your own financial and payment record
- Air accident cover of up to ₹50 lakh
- Free Flying Returns membership for non-members, with extra baggage, priority confirmations and telephone check-in
- A free supplementary card
- A dedicated toll-free card and travel services helpline, 24 hours a day
Watch out
- WITHDRAWN — Indian Airlines was merged into Air India, the co-brand ended, and Flying Returns has since been folded into Air India's Maharaja Club
- NO REWARDS PROGRAMME AT ALL — Amex lists seven benefits on this card and Membership Rewards is not one of them; the complimentary ticket was the whole return
- The fare discounts did NOT apply to bookings made through the airline's call centres, its website or any online portal
- The discounts applied only to the co-brand cardmember's OWN travel, in Amex's own words
- The complimentary ticket ran on a posted Travel Log form submitted within 30 days of a 12-month accrual window closing, and counted only tickets bought for yourself
- American Express published no joining or annual fee for this card on any surviving page, so what it cost is genuinely unknown
- The ₹1,00,000 threshold was itself a revision — the earlier ₹75,000 applied to travel log forms received before 1 July 2011
What these points actually fly
American Express has not published what this card earns, so there are no points here to fly with — not zero points, and not points that go nowhere: nothing stated either way. The moment a benefit sheet exists we will price whatever it names.
what the cards that DO reach a chart can fly — 2,196 corridors priced →
Lounge access
0 of 793 tracked doors
No lounge access. This card opens exactly 0 of 793 tracked lounge doors — board with the crowd, or find a card that doesn't →
Can you get it?
the route in — no cutoffs published
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Closed to new applications — existing cardholders keep the card; there is no way in.
You cannot. Indian Airlines was merged into Air India and American Express's co-brand ended with it; the page survives only in the Internet Archive.
American Express publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
no MITC row researched for this card yet · filter the board by what you can get →
What's changed for this card
8 dated changes
Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to. Every one is dated here; the tracker carries each one's before → after and the write-up.
- 1 Oct 2026Amex Platinum loses Lufthansa Lounge access with no replacementComplimentary access to participating Lufthansa Lounges for eligible Platinum Card Members, through 30 Sep 2026 → From 1 Oct 2026 Platinum Card Members have no access to any Lufthansa Lounge; no substitute benefit announced
Announced in July 2026, effective 1 October: eligible Platinum Card Members lose access to every Lufthansa Lounge, and Amex has named nothing to put in its place. Access runs through 30 September, so there's a two-month window to use it. For Indian Platinum holders the Lufthansa rooms were the good half of a Frankfurt or Munich connection — Priority Pass and the Global Lounge Collection still cover the airports, but not with a Senator-grade product. It's the third clip to the same card's lounge stack in one quarter, after Mumbai's Centurion closed on 1 July and Centurion guest access halved on 8 July. Amex India's ₹66,000 metal card is being asked to justify itself on Fine Hotels + Resorts and hotel status, not on doors.
- 1 Oct 2026Amex bolts a ₹1 lakh spend gate onto Platinum Travel's domestic lounge access
- 1 Oct 2026Platinum Travel's domestic lounge access gets a ₹1 lakh prior-quarter spend gate8 complimentary domestic lounge visits a year, capped at two per quarter, with no spend condition anywhere. → Up to two complimentary domestic visits in a calendar quarter, EARNED by spending ₹1 lakh or more in eligible transactions in the preceding calendar quarter.
Same notice, three weeks later, and it lands on the other half of what this card is for. "From October 1, 2026, complimentary domestic airport lounge access will be linked to quarterly spending on the card. To receive up to two complimentary domestic airport lounge visits in a calendar quarter, a cardmember will need to have spent INR 1 lakh or more in eligible transactions in the preceding calendar quarter." The visit COUNT does not change — two a quarter, eight a year, exactly as before. What changes is that they stop being something you hold and start being something you earn, and ₹4 lakh a year of spend is now the price of a benefit that used to come with the ₹5,000 fee. On a card sold to travellers rather than to heavy spenders, that is a real withdrawal: the ₹1.9 lakh milestone deleted in September was the rung a moderate spender actually reached, and now the lounges want ₹4 lakh a year too. CARRY THE TRANSITIONAL RUNG, because it applies to exactly one quarter and then vanishes. CardInsider's report of the same notice adds what the first report did not: "As a one-time exception, for the October–December 2026 quarter, cardholders will need to have spent ₹70,000 or more between July and September 2026 to qualify for lounge access." So the gate for the first affected quarter is ₹70,000, not ₹1 lakh — and July and August of that window are already spent by the time most readers learn this, which is what a one-time exception announced seven weeks ahead really means.
- 30 Sept 2026Amex India discontinues Reward Multiplier — the whole 5X/3X/2X ladder
- 10 Sept 2026Amex guts Platinum Travel's milestone ladder — 30,000 MR out, the Taj voucher doubled
- 10 Sept 2026Amex deletes the ₹1.9 lakh milestone on Platinum Travel and swaps the ₹7 lakh points for a voucher
- 28 Aug 2026Amex India pauses new card applications across the entire portfolio
- 18 Aug 2026Amex India re-rates Virgin Atlantic upward — 2:1 becomes 5:4, the first MR buff in years
Every American Express change we've dated → 28 events since 1993, 21 of them nerfs — worst year 2026.
Verified against American Express's own documents on
Not published , and we will not invent it: the annual fee · the earn rate and the currency it earns.
Every document behind this page — 2 of them, each with the day we read it
- official American Express India's Air India Green Card page (archived 17-Oct-2012) — the revised ₹1,00,000 complimentary ticket threshold, the two-class fare discount and the ₹50 lakh accident cover
- official American Express India's own "All Cards" shelf today — six personal cards, not one of them a co-brand, and this card is not among them