Thai postpones the Royal Orchid Plus rewrite — indefinitely
New Royal Orchid Plus qualification criteria were due on 5 August 2026. They didn't arrive. THAI says the timeline was rescheduled 'to allow additional time for further refinement' and names no new date. Your miles and the Indian routes in are untouched.
Thai Airways was supposed to move Royal Orchid Plus onto new membership qualification criteria on 5 August 2026. It didn’t. The notice now sitting on THAI’s own Status & Benefits page says the implementation “has been rescheduled to allow additional time for further refinement,” that “the current Royal Orchid Plus membership qualification criteria and programme terms and conditions will remain unchanged and continue to apply,” and that current membership status is unaffected.
No new date. Not a quarter, not a year.
Call this what it is: a stay of execution, not a win. Nothing about Royal Orchid Plus got better on 5 August. A rewrite simply failed to land, and an airline that has just spent two years in and out of rehabilitation gets more time to decide what it wants its frequent flyer programme to be. The honest read is that the criteria were not ready, and criteria that are not ready are usually criteria that were going to be worse — programmes rarely need extra refinement time to hand members a discount.
What that means if you are climbing. The ladder you started on is still the ladder. Gold still means 50,000 qualifying miles or 40 THAI international sectors across either of your two personal calendar-year periods; Platinum and Gold members whose status expires between 1 June and 31 December 2026 still get the extension to 30 June 2027 that THAI granted earlier this year. If you were sprinting to lock in status under the old rules before August, stop sprinting — but don’t stop counting, because the replacement can be announced at any time and THAI has given itself no deadline.
What it does not mean. This is a qualification-criteria change, not a miles change. Earning rates, the award chart, mileage validity and the partner shelf are all untouched. From India, the way in is unchanged: SBI Card MILES still transfers to Royal Orchid Plus at 1:1, and the hotel hop through IHG One Rewards is still there at 5:1 for anyone with a stranded balance. Nothing on this desk’s transfer graph moves on the back of this notice.
We are logging the non-event because a non-event with no end date is a live risk. When THAI names the new criteria, they are the story.