Kotak Air+
KeepThe same ₹1 Air Miles as the ₹25,000 Solitaire — for ₹3,000, if you fly domestic.
What it's worth to you — net annual value
Welcome: 2,500 Air Miles (₹2,500) on joining + 2,500 Air Miles at every renewal
How these numbers are computed →
Spend tiers, milestones and fee waivers included, at our house ₹/point. Portal and category multipliers can push higher — run your exact number →
The take
Air+ is Kotak's answer for the domestic-first traveller: a ₹3,000 Visa that earns the very same Kotak Air Miles as the ₹25,000 Solitaire — a flat ₹1 each against flights and hotels on Kotak Unbox — at 2 Air Miles per ₹100 everywhere and 5 on Unbox travel (capped 15,000 Air Miles a statement cycle). Two things carry it: 2,500 Air Miles on joining and again at every renewal (₹2,500, most of the fee back), and a quarterly milestone that hands you a ₹5,000 travel voucher for every ₹1.5 lakh you spend — up to ₹20,000 a year. The catches are real: nothing at all on international spends and a 2% forex markup on them, a thin four-visit domestic lounge quota, and airline transfers that run 2:1 — including a 2:1 into Air India Maharaja Club, where the flagship Solitaire gets 1:1. For a domestic flyer who books through Unbox and clears ₹1.5 lakh a quarter, it's a genuinely cheap, honest travel card; for anyone spending abroad, look elsewhere.
What's good
- Same ₹1 Kotak Air Miles as the ₹25,000 Solitaire, for a ₹3,000 fee
- 5 Air Miles/₹100 (5%) on Kotak Unbox flights & hotels; 2/₹100 elsewhere
- ₹5,000 travel voucher every quarter you spend ₹1.5 lakh — up to ₹20,000 a year
- 2,500 Air Miles on joining and again at every renewal (₹2,500)
- Domestic + Priority Pass international lounge access
Watch out
- Zero Air Miles on international spends — plus a 2% forex markup
- Airline transfers run 2:1 (incl Air India Maharaja) — worse than Solitaire's 1:1, and worse than the ₹1 flat Unbox redemption
- Only 4 domestic (2/quarter) + 2 international lounge visits a year
- ₹3,000 fee has no spend waiver; the ₹20,000 milestone needs ₹1.5 lakh EVERY quarter
What earns, what doesn't
Air+ earns 2 Air Miles/₹100 base and 5/₹100 on Kotak Unbox flights/hotels (accelerated earn capped 15,000 Air Miles/statement cycle); NO Air Miles on international spends. Category exclusions follow Kotak's standard set — community-mapped, flag.
- Fuel · excluded Fuel excluded from Air Miles (Kotak standard, community, flag)
- Rent & property management · excluded Rent excluded (Kotak standard, community, flag)
- Wallet loads · excluded Wallet loads excluded (Kotak standard, community, flag)
- Government / tax · excluded Government/tax excluded (Kotak standard, community, flag)
per Kotak Mahindra Bank T&C (community-sourced) · rank every card by spend category →
Where the miles go
Ratios read card points : partner miles — 2:1 means 2 points become 1 mile. Never the other way round.
every Kotak Mahindra Bank route, side by side → · the Kotak Air Miles hub →
Lounge access
Opens 606 of 662 tracked lounge doors across 251 airports — see the full map →
Can you get it?
The cutoffs and the actual route in — not the "apply now" button, the door that opens.
Direct application — no invite list, no banking relationship required.
Open to apply — Kotak reintroduced Air+ after the RBI card-sourcing ban on Kotak was lifted, and the product page carries an application flow. CardInsider reported a limited-time joining-fee waiver at launch, but the official fee schedule (re-checked 2026-07-21) lists the ₹3,000 joining fee with waiver "not available", so treat any fee-free offer as promotional and confirm it before you apply. The ₹3,000 annual fee recurs with no spend-based waiver. Kotak publishes no separate income or age cutoff for Air+.
Kotak Mahindra Bank publishes no income or age cutoffs for this card. Blank means blank — we don't invent numbers to fill a grid.
per the official Kotak Mahindra Bank MITC — figures marked (community) aren't in the PDF; the issuer won't say · filter the ranking by what you can get →
The fine print
What the MITC actually says — the rates, fees and cutoffs the brochure skips.
Visa (tier to verify), reintroduced after the RBI card-sourcing ban on Kotak was lifted. Fee ₹3,000 + GST; joining fee currently waived (limited-time), annual ₹3,000 recurs with no spend waiver. 2% forex; NO Air Miles on international spends. Base 2 Air Miles/₹100, 5/₹100 on Kotak Unbox flights/hotels capped 15,000 Air Miles/statement cycle. Welcome + renewal 2,500 Air Miles each. Quarterly milestone ₹5,000 travel voucher per ₹1.5L/quarter, up to ₹20k/yr. 4 domestic (2/quarter) + 2 intl (Priority Pass) lounge visits/yr. Fuel surcharge waiver 1% capped ₹4,500/yr. APR follows Kotak's premium retail tier (per the Solitaire KFS) — verify. Kotak publishes no income/age cutoff.
per the official Kotak Mahindra Bank MITC · reviewed 10 Jul 2026
What's changed for this card
Full tracker →Devaluations and buffs that touch this card directly, its issuer, or the points and programs it earns and transfers to.
- 10 Jul 2026BluChip ↔ Accor ALL ratios surface — 6:1 in, 3:2 out, live 13 JulyCorridor announced Apr 2025; no ratios published for 15 months → 6,000 BluChips → 1,000 ALL points (6:1); 3,000 ALL → 2,000 BluChips (3:2); live 13 Jul 2026
India's first airline↔hotel points corridor finally has numbers: ratios spotted on the Accor ALL site ahead of the 13 July joint launch. 6,000 BluChips buy 1,000 ALL points — a respectable 60% of value retained at house values, making Accor the best BluChip exit that isn't an IndiGo seat. The reverse leg (3,000 ALL → 2,000 BluChips) torches 81% of ALL's fixed stay value; use it never. And the fantasy of resurrecting the dead Axis EDGE→Accor route through BluChips dies at this ratio: even inside Axis's intro window the chain recovers just 30%.
- 5 Jul 2026Marriott quietly reprices awards up 2–16% overnightWeekend-of pre-hike dynamic award prices (no published chart) → Award costs up 2.4–15.6% (most 3–8%); ~5–10% average across sampled hotels
Over the first weekend of July 2026 Marriott pushed through another no-notice, unpublished-chart devaluation — spotted first on Chinese frequent-flyer forums, then confirmed across the points blogs. Increases ran 2.4% to 15.6% with most properties 3–8% pricier: the Athenee Bangkok went 32k→37k, the London EDITION 107k→115k, the Ritz-Carlton Maldives 168k→176k. Post-hike, sampled Bangkok redemptions cleared only ~0.56¢/point after taxes and fees — one more reason Bonvoy's house value keeps drifting toward its floor. It follows the 2025 round that lifted the Cat-5 ceiling to 76,000 points, a 90% climb from early-2022's 40k.
- 30 Jun 2026Amex India cuts Etihad Guest as an MR transfer partnerMR points transferable to Etihad Guest Miles → Etihad Guest transfer route closed for good
Membership Rewards points could move to Etihad Guest only until 30 June 2026, 11:59 PM IST — after that the route is dead, part of a global Amex-Etihad wind-down already hitting the UK, US, Canada and Germany. Neither side explained why, but Etihad's generous Etihad Guest sweet spots (especially A380 First redemptions) were a favourite MR outlet for Indian cardholders, and this closes one of the better ones with no replacement announced. Points already transferred are unaffected — only future transfers stop.
- 1 Jun 2026AU, YES and IndusInd points open transfers to Maharaja ClubAU/YES/IndusInd points locked in closed loops → Maharaja routes: IndusInd Tiger 1:1 (Pinnacle 2:1, Legend 4:1); AU Zenith+ 3:2, other AU cards 6:1; YES Marquee/Reserv 15:1
Three banks joined Air India's transfer roster at once — and the ratios are the whole story. The lifetime-free IndusInd Tiger gets the only honest 1:1 (capped 25k/month); AU Zenith+ lands a genuinely good 3:2 that triples what AU points were worth; everything else — Pinnacle 2:1, Legend 4:1, the AU 6:1 crowd, YES at a punitive 15:1 — is a decoy dressed as a partnership.
- 2 Apr 2026Axis purges Marriott, Accor and Qatar from its transfer list overnightMarriott, Accor, Qatar Airways at Group A ratios → All three gone; BA, Finnair, Vietnam Airlines added at 2:1
With zero advance notice — despite Axis's own MITC requiring 30 days — EDGE Miles/Rewards cardholders woke up on 2 April 2026 to find Marriott Bonvoy, Accor Live Limitless and Qatar Airways Privilege Club stripped from the transfer partner list. The three replacements (British Airways Executive Club, Finnair Plus, Vietnam Airlines LotusSmiles) land in the worst tier: 2:1 on Atlas instead of the usual 1:2, and 5:1 on Magnus/Reserve instead of 5:2 — so you need up to 4x the points for the same miles. This guts Atlas and Magnus's best hotel-transfer sweet spots in one stroke and pushes the whole EDGE ecosystem toward airline-only redemptions.
- 1 Apr 2026Maharaja Club gets cheaper awards and faster creditingHigher award costs; slow points crediting → Domestic awards from 1,500 pts; credited within 2 hours
A rare buff. Air India's post-merger programme drops domestic award flights to 1,500 points, cabin upgrades to 4,000, credits Star Alliance miles within two hours, and eases Platinum to 60 flights. The transfer target Indian card geeks care about actually got better.
- 10 Jan 2026SBI Card splits domestic lounges into tiers, adds entry feesUniform domestic lounge list, free swipe-in access → Set A/Set B lounge tiers by card, plus ₹2–25 entry charges
From 10 January 2026, SBI Card sorts its domestic lounge network into a Set A (top cards like Club Vistara SBI Card, Apollo SELECT) and a broader Set B (PRIME, Pulse, Titan SBI Card and others) — and bolts on a non-refundable ₹2 authorization charge plus a ₹25 validation hold on every visit. It's marketed as an expansion since more airports are covered, but the fine print is a two-tier system with new friction at the gate, right after SBI had already pulled complimentary air accident insurance six months earlier.
- 1 Jun 2025Kotak guts Privy League Signature and pulls it from saleOn open sale; ₹0.25/point cash redemption; ungated quarterly lounge visits; 2.49%/month interest → Closed to new applicants; cash redemption cut to ₹0.20 (min 2,000 points); lounge access gated on ₹75k/quarter; earn caps on education, insurance, utility, govt, gaming and wallet; interest 3.5%/month
Four months after the RBI let Kotak issue cards again, it took the knife to Privy League Signature: the cash value of a point falls 20%, the free quarterly lounge visits now demand ₹75,000 of spend a quarter, six spend categories get earn caps, rent earns nothing, and the interest rate jumps from 2.49% to 3.5% a month — all while the card quietly leaves the shelf for new applicants. Existing holders keep a lounge pass; the rewards story is officially over.
Go deeper
Sources
Every fact on this page is checked against these documents — the issuer's own paperwork first. Spot something stale? The PDF wins, and we re-verify.
- official Official product page — ₹3,000 fee, 2 Air Miles/₹100 (5 on Unbox travel, capped 15k/cycle), no rewards on intl spends, 2,500 welcome + renewal Air Miles, 2% forex checked 21 Jul 2026
- community CardInsider — ₹3,000 fee (joining Nil limited-time), 2:1 airline transfers / 3:1 Marriott / 2:1 Accor, up to ₹20k travel-voucher milestones, 4 domestic + 2 intl lounges checked 21 Jul 2026
- community CardInsider — Air+ quarterly milestone ₹5,000 travel voucher per ₹1.5L/quarter, up to ₹20,000/yr checked 21 Jul 2026
- community CardInsider — Kotak Air+ Air Miles convert 2:1 to Air India Maharaja Club (Solitaire 1:1) checked 21 Jul 2026
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