SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table

SBI Card publishes one document that decides where its Travel Credits can go: the MILES rewards terms and conditions, section 3, “Airline Partners and Conversion Ratios”. This desk read that table on 2 August 2026 and recorded eighteen airlines. The copy served at the same URL on 22 August 2026 lists seventeen, and the PDF’s own internal ModDate puts that edition at 3 August 2026 — one day after we last looked.

The airline that left is Etihad.

The proof is in the numbering, not the absence

An airline missing from a table is weak evidence on its own; a PDF re-extraction can drop a row. This one does not need that argument. Our per-partner citations quote the row numbers SBI printed, and they now split cleanly in two.

Everything up to position seven is untouched: Air Canada Aeroplan at 3, Air France-KLM Flying Blue at 4, Air India at 5, British Airways at 6, Cathay at 7. Everything from position eight onward has moved up by exactly one — Thai Royal Orchid Plus from 14 to 13, Turkish Miles&Smiles from 15 to 14, Qantas Frequent Flyer from 17 to 16, Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles now closing the table at 17.

One row was deleted at position eight. Position eight was “Etihad Airways / Etihad Guest / 1:1”. The string “Etihad” does not appear anywhere in the seven pages of the new document.

Every other partner we carry survives, airline and hotel, at the same ratio: Emirates Skywards 2:1, Ethiopian ShebaMiles 2:1, JAL Mileage Bank 2:1, Saudia AlFursan 2:1, SpiceClub 1:1, United MileagePlus 2:1, Accor ALL 2:1, IHG One Rewards 1:1, Club ITC 2:1, Jumeirah One 2:1, Orchid Rewards, Wyndham Rewards 1:1, Shangri-La Circle 6:1, Radisson Rewards 1:1. Twenty-four rows, unchanged. This is Etihad being dropped, not SBI narrowing its transfer board.

The timing is worse than the ratio

A 1:1 route into an airline currency is a full-value exit at our ₹1-per-partner-mile anchor, so losing it costs an SBI collector real money. But the sequence is what stings.

SBI phased out the Etihad Guest SBI Card and the Etihad Guest SBI Premier Card from December 2025 and reissued holders onto SBI Card MILES products; both co-brands stopped working on 31 March 2026. The Premier paid 6 Etihad Guest Miles per ₹100 on etihad.com, the best published rate any Indian card ever gave on an Etihad booking, and 2 per ₹100 on everything else. When it died, the 1:1 Travel Credits route was the thing that made the migration survivable: a six-year Etihad collector could keep feeding the same account through a different card.

That consolation is now gone too. Five months after closing the co-brands, SBI closed the transfer route as well, and there is no SBI product of any kind that reaches Etihad Guest.

What to do with the points

Nothing about miles already sitting in an Etihad Guest account changes — those are yours, subject to Etihad’s own 18-month activity expiry. What changes is the pipe.

If you were holding SBI Travel Credits for an Abu Dhabi business seat, the balance is now an Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Avios, Asia Miles or Maharaja Club balance instead. SBI’s Aeroplan row remains the best Star Alliance ratio any Indian bank currency gets, and Aeroplan collects no carrier fuel surcharge — a better plan than the one that just closed, if a different one.

If you specifically want Etihad Guest miles from an Indian card, BOBCARD’s Etihad co-brands are what is left. They are the whole market now.

SBI announced none of this. There is no notice, no cut-off, no email — only a re-uploaded PDF with one fewer row in it, which is exactly why we hash these documents.