1 Air India Maharaja point is worth ₹0.80 in India.
₹0.80₹800 per 1,000 points, our house mark
held at ₹0.80 · re-marked 10 Jul
How we got this ₹ figure
₹0.80 is our HOUSE value for a point — what a disciplined traveller actually clears, not the best redemption we have ever seen (₹1.70, the ceiling) and not the worst you can always fall back on (₹0.45, the floor). It is the number every route on this page is priced with.
The mark has 2 dated points in data/valuation-history.yaml, each one pinned to a quantified event in the tracker — no interpolation. The last move was re-marked 10 Jul. How we value a point →
Which of my cards reach it? — 90 do
8 cards earn Air India Maharaja Points outright. The figure is the reward rate — what ₹100 of ORDINARY spend earns back at our house ₹/point, before milestones, accelerators and the annual fee. How we compute it →
Axis Bank Vistara Infinite Credit Card2.4%Axis BankAir India SBI Signature Card3.2%SBI CardClub Vistara SBI Card PRIME1.6%SBI Card5 more cards that earn it — same ranking, best first
82 more cards feed it by transfer, ranked by what one of ITS points actually becomes here — per-card exceptions and card-specific whitelists already applied, no averages.
Axis Bank PRIMUS₹4.001:5 via Axis EDGE MilesAxis Olympus₹3.201:4 via Axis EDGE MilesAxis Atlas₹1.601:2 via Axis EDGE Miles79 more cards that get you there — same ranking, best conversion first
The full funnel — ratios, chains and ₹/mile, side by side →
Shopping by bank instead? Axis Bank → · SBI Card → · IDFC FIRST Bank → · ICICI Bank →
also known as: Air India Maharaja Club · Air India Maharaja Club (Flying Returns)
The default premium-cabin target after the Vistara merger. The April 2026 award-cost cuts nudged value up; business-class sweet spots still clear ₹1.5+/point.
cheapest way in — what one point costs to mint
Air India Maharaja Points gets cut — we grade its nerf risk high 11 cuts in 24 months — latest: Sep-2026 partner purge (major) How we grade it →
Expiry: 24 months; any paid Air India or Air India Express flight extends the whole balance another 24 months (award tickets don't count)
No corridor on our board prices a seat in Air India Maharaja Points against a published chart — every option that reaches it is dynamic, and an estimate is not a seat. the 2,196 corridors that DO have a verified price →
This drawing wants a wide screen. Every route it draws is in the lists below, priced.
+4 more in — every route is listed below, and drawn on the map.
Every way in
Currencies that transfer in
Ratios read source points : Air India Maharaja Points, cheapest mint first — the ₹ figure is what one point here costs you via that route.
6 more currencies that transfer in — same ranking, cheapest mint first
Gone (1)
Every way in (via a chain)
Chains (2–4 legs) that survive our honesty filter — shown only where no direct route exists or the chain strictly beats it. End-to-end ratio in card points per point of Air India Maharaja Points; priced at this program's house value.
Redeeming Air India Maharaja Points
What the programme itself publishes — not what a booking engine quoted somebody once. Where it publishes nothing, this says so.
- Cash on top of the miles You pay any surcharge levied
Air India's own Maharaja Club terms make the member liable for applicable taxes AND surcharges on an award — on Air India, Air India Express and Star Alliance flights alike. There is also real cash the desk models nowhere: a published convenience fee of ₹399 domestic, ₹649 short-haul and ₹999 long-haul per award booking, and GST charged on the notional full fare even on a Cash+Points ticket.
“For Air India/Air India Express/Star Alliance flights, members shall pay applicable taxes and surcharges.”
airindia.com · read
- Booking window Opening: not published
Air India publishes no booking horizon for award flights. It publishes something more useful about how the price moves: Maharaja Club splits every award into a Value fare for early planners and a higher Prime fare for peak dates and last-minute travel. Booking early is not about finding the seat here — it is about which of the two fares you pay.
“Value Fare offers minimum points deduction if you plan your Award Flight well in advance. Prime Fare offers award flights even during peak seasons or a last-minute travel plan.”
airindia.com · read
What a point has been worth
Derived only from quantified, dated events in the tracker — no interpolation, no vibes.
- 10 Jul 2026 ₹0.80 current house value
- 12 Nov 2024 ₹0.80 2024-11-12 — Club Vistara folds into Maharaja Club at 1:1 (changelog event; the modern program's birth). No quantified whole-currency move since: the 2026-04-01 buff states the new floor (domestic awards from 1,500 pts) but not the prior cost, so no percentage can be derived — flat is the honest line even though the trend reads up.
The nerf log
Full tracker →Every tracked event that touches Air India Maharaja Points.
- 23 Sept 2026Axis EDGE brings Accor back, drops ITC, and adds Cathay, Miles & More and HiltonAccor and Marriott off the grid since 2 April 2026; Club ITC live; no Cathay, Miles & More or Hilton → Accor live at the punished rates; ITC removed; Cathay, Hilton and Miles & More live; Marriott still gone
Axis's own Travel EDGE terms, re-read 25 September 2026, already show the grid that went live on 23 September. Accor ALL is back, and not at the old Atlas 1:2: EDGE Miles convert at 2:1 (Olympus 1:2) and EDGE Rewards at 5:1, with Magnus for Burgundy at 5:2 and only Burgundy Private still at 5:4. Club ITC is off the table. Three partners are new. Cathay Asia Miles sits on that same punished grid. Hilton Honors is the ordinary one: EDGE Miles 1:2, EDGE Rewards 5:2, Burgundy 5:4. Lufthansa Miles & More is the exception on Atlas, which converts 1:1 there while every other standard airline on that card is 1:2; the EDGE Rewards side of Miles & More is the ordinary 5:2. Marriott stays removed. Qatar Privilege Club was already back. Flying Blue, Air India and Qantas moved into Group A, which is the capped group. The Axis Rewards credit card's Amex network is advertised as joining-fee and annual-fee nil for a limited period; there is no separate Amex variant on this board, so that offer is not modelled as a fee change.
- 25 Aug 2026Vietnam Airlines Lotusmiles opens a broad SkyTeam status match — up to Elite PlusNo standing public status-match route from most Indian-held airline and hotel tiers into a SkyTeam Elite Plus card → A paid Lotusmiles status match accepting ~47 airline programmes (Air India Maharaja Club included) and 18 hotel chains, granting 12 months up to Platinum
Lotusmiles will match tier status from roughly 47 airline programmes — Lufthansa, Swiss, Etihad, Emirates, BA, Qatar, Singapore, Qantas and Air India's Maharaja Club — plus 18 hotel chains (Marriott, Accor, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, matched through Gold only), for a flat 12-month grant with no stated flying requirement. The SkyTeam translation is the point: Titanium and Gold confer SkyTeam Elite, and Platinum confers SkyTeam Elite Plus — priority everything plus a guest into SkyTeam lounges across the network. Priced USD 129–359 by tier matched. For an Indian reader sitting on an underused hotel or airline status, it is one of the cheaper routes to a year of Elite Plus; match near a renewal and treat it as a one-year sprint.
- 20 Aug 2026IHG Hotels & Resorts becomes a Maharaja Club earning and conversion partnerMaharaja Club had no IHG relationship: no earning on IHG stays, and IHG One Rewards points had no door into Maharaja Points. → Up to 2 Maharaja Points per US$1 on eligible IHG stays (1 point per US$1 at Staybridge Suites, Candlewood Suites, IHG Residences and IHG Army Hotels), after setting the IHG One Rewards earning preference to Air India | Maharaja Club. Existing IHG One Rewards points also convert at 1,000 IHG points to 200 Maharaja Points — 5:1 — with a 1,000-point minimum, requested through the IHG One Rewards contact centre and credited within 60 business days.
Air India's programme picks up a second global hotel chain, and the conversion leg is the interesting half. 5:1 is IHG's standard airline grid — the same rate its 34 published airline partners get — and at our house values it is brutal: 5 IHG points worth ₹2.75 buy 1 Maharaja Point worth ₹0.80, so the corridor retains 29% and torches 71%. Nobody should route into Maharaja this way: SBI, HDFC and Axis all reach Maharaja Club directly at 1:1 or 2:1. It is a stranded-IHG-balance exit, not a strategy. The earning leg is the cleaner offer — 2 points per US$1 at full-service IHG brands is worth more to an Air India flyer than IHG's own base earn is to a casual IHG member. Two cautions the marketing copy skips: the conversion is phone-only, and 60 business days is three months of float. This desk has NOT wired the corridor into the optimizer — IHG has not published its side of it, and every IHG route we price is sourced to IHG's own page.
- 6 Aug 2026MaxCoins' full transfer catalogue surfaces — Accor at 2:1 re-prices the coin to ₹1.08One verified door (Maharaja Club 5:4 via Air India's partner page) priced MaxCoins at ₹0.64 by the best-exit method; Accor ALL appeared in-app ~04-Aug with no ratio published anywhere citable → The in-app Redeem catalogue (read 06-Aug-2026) prints all eight doors — ALL Accor 2:1, SAS EuroBonus 1:1, AirAsia 1:1, Maharaja Club 5:4, LotusMiles 5:4, IndiGo BluChip 5:4 (enrollment gate), ShebaMiles 5:3, Air Arabia 5:3 — plus a '1 MaxCoin = ₹1' gift-card face. Best exit is now Accor: ₹1.08/coin
The gift-card app's coin grew up. When Accor ALL appeared in Maximize's transfer list in early August, no ratio existed anywhere on the public web — the catalogue lives server-side, behind the app. Now read in full, it settles the question generously: 100 MaxCoins become 50 Accor points, and at Accor's ₹2.15 peg that is ₹1.08 of hotel value per coin — ahead of the ₹1 gift-card face the app itself prints, and well ahead of the old Maharaja-door mark of ₹0.64. The rest of the catalogue is mostly a decoy: EuroBonus at 1:1 and LotusMiles at 5:4 sit below the cash face, and AirAsia at 1:1 turns a rupee into twenty-three paise. The play is unchanged in shape — earn the coins as gift-card discounts, exit through Accor — but the exit is now the best rupee-per-point door this currency has ever had.
- 3 Aug 2026SBI drops Etihad Guest from the MILES transfer table — the last SBI door into the programmeSBI Card Travel Credits transferred 1:1 into Etihad Guest, one of eighteen airline partners in §3 of the MILES rewards T&C. At the ₹1/partner-mile anchor that was a full-value exit, and it was the only route left after the two Etihad Guest SBI co-brands were retired. → No Etihad route at all. The MILES rewards T&C now lists seventeen airline partners and Etihad is not one of them — the word does not appear anywhere in the seven-page document. Every other SBI partner survives at the same ratio.
SBI Card's own MILES rewards T&C, re-fetched on 22 August 2026 and carrying a 3 August 2026 ModDate inside the PDF, has one fewer airline in it than the edition this desk read on 2 August. The deletion is provable from the numbering rather than from absence alone: the table's first seven rows are unchanged (Air Canada 3, Air France-KLM 4, Air India 5, British Airways 6, Cathay 7), and every row from position eight onward has moved up exactly one — Thai from 14 to 13, Qantas from 17 to 16. Position eight was Etihad Airways / Etihad Guest / 1:1. All twenty-four other partners we carry, airline and hotel, are still there at the same ratios, so this is Etihad being dropped and not SBI narrowing transfers. The timing matters more than the ratio. SBI phased out the Etihad Guest SBI and Etihad Guest SBI Premier cards from December 2025 and reissued holders onto MILES products, and the transfer route was what made that migration survivable — a Premier holder who had spent six years earning Etihad miles could keep feeding the same account through Travel Credits. That is now closed, and India's remaining pipes into Etihad Guest run through BOBCARD's Etihad co-brands, not through SBI. If you hold SBI Travel Credits earmarked for an Abu Dhabi business seat, they are Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Avios or Maharaja points now. ON THE DATE: SBI publishes no notice and no cut-off. The date here is the day the desk read the change out of SBI's own document; the PDF's internal ModDate puts the edition at 3 August 2026, which is the earliest day we can prove, not an announcement.
7 earlier events on this program
- 2 Aug 2026Flipkart SuperCoins into Maharaja Club improve to 2:1Launch coverage (31 Mar 2026) put the Flipkart SuperCoins → Maharaja Club conversion at 5:2 with a 50-SuperCoin minimum — 2.5 SuperCoins per Maharaja point → Air India's own Flipkart partner page publishes 2 SuperCoins = 1 Maharaja point, minimum 20 SuperCoins then increments of 5, credited within 3 working days, one-way and non-reversible
A quiet ~25% improvement on the oddest feeder in the Maharaja ecosystem. When Flipkart SuperCoins joined the Maharaja Club partner grid in March 2026, the launch coverage priced the conversion at 5:2 — two and a half SuperCoins per point. Air India's own partner page now publishes the table at a flat 2:1, with the entry bar cut from 50 SuperCoins to 20. At Maharaja's ₹0.80 house value that makes a SuperCoin worth ₹0.40 on its way into an award seat, which is more than most of what Flipkart will sell you for them. The usual caveats are printed right on the page: one-way, non-reversible, and up to three working days in transit — so convert what you'll fly with, not your whole jar. Whether the launch grid was corrected or genuinely improved, the published number today is the better one, and it is the issuer's own.
- 26 Jul 2026Air India's quiet network retreat: Tokyo moves, Paris and San Francisco go, Malé pausesAI mainline on BOM–CDG and BLR–SFO nonstops; Tokyo served at Narita; DEL–MLE and MAA–SIN flying; DEL–CMB 14x and BOM–CMB 7x weekly → BOM–CDG dropped (Air France keeps the nonstop) and BLR–SFO ended Feb-2026; Tokyo moved to Haneda Mar-2025; DEL–MLE and MAA–SIN suspended 1 Jun–31 Aug 2026 (back 1 and 2 Sep); Colombo trimmed to 13x from Delhi and 4x from Mumbai; Seoul–Incheon and Jeddah untouched
CORRECTED 2 August 2026 — this entry originally read that Air India had exited Colombo, Malé, Seoul-Incheon and Jeddah outright, on the strength of a Bandaranaike airport table that turns out to carry no Air India row at all and is simply incomplete. Air India's own 13 May 2026 press note and the schedule filing behind it say something narrower: Delhi–Colombo drops from 14 to 13 weekly and Mumbai–Colombo from 7 to 4, Delhi–Malé and Chennai–Singapore are cancelled for 1 June–31 August 2026 only, and neither Seoul-Incheon nor Jeddah is touched. What genuinely went is the Mumbai–Paris and Bengaluru–San Francisco nonstops, plus Tokyo's move from Narita to Haneda in March 2025. For award bookers the practical effect is thinner seats on Colombo rather than a dead market, and Maharaja's flat destination-tier chart still prices all-mainline connections via Delhi or Mumbai at the same number. Our rows for Colombo, Seoul and Jeddah stand; the Malé rows are a summer pause, bookable again from 1 September.
- 25 Jul 2026HDFC switches on 22 transfer partners for BizPowerAirmiles conversion via NetBanking only — no partner ever named by HDFC → 22 SmartBuy transfer partners — 14 at 2:1, 8 at 3:1
HDFC's ₹2,500 business card just got a redemption game. BizPower Reward Points — 5 RP per ₹200 since 15 May 2026, 5X on income tax, GST, PayZapp bills, Google and Meta Ads — could previously only leave the account as cashback at ₹0.20, catalogue goods at ₹0.35, SmartBuy travel at ₹0.50, or a nameless 'Airmiles conversion' via NetBanking. From 25 July they transfer on SmartBuy to the same 22 airline and hotel programmes Infinia and Diners Black see, one notch worse across the board: 2:1 to KrisFlyer, Flying Blue, Avianca LifeMiles, Turkish, United, Accor ALL, IHG, Club ITC, AirAsia, Finnair, Radisson, Wyndham, Lotusmiles and SpiceClub; 3:1 to Qatar and BA Avios, Air India Maharaja Club, Marriott Bonvoy, Aeroplan, Cathay Asia Miles, Etihad Guest and Thai Royal Orchid Plus. HDFC announced nothing and still names no partner in any document it publishes — the grid comes from four independent sightings that agree partner-for-partner, and the 2:1 base matches HDFC's own FAQ line, '1 Reward Points = Rs.0.5 airmiles'. Accor ALL at 2:1 is the standout: at our ₹2.15 house value that is the only one of the 22 doors worth more than a rupee a point (₹1.07), and it beats every cash-out HDFC offers this card. Sister card BizBlack, on Infinia-grade earn, still reaches exactly one programme.
- 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.
- 1 Apr 2026Axis closes the Atlas to new applicantsOpen to new applications → Closed to new applicants — existing cardholders unaffected
Confirmed in early 2026: Axis has stopped issuing its flagship mid-tier travel card to new applicants. First flagged by a September-2025 rumour of internal distributor communication (a '1 September' cutoff), it became real with no press release — the Atlas simply left the application pipeline, and Axis customer care later confirmed the closure. Existing holders keep the card, their EDGE Miles balance, and lounge access; nothing changes for them. But a bank that stops issuing a card rarely invests in it afterwards. There is no confirmed replacement at the Atlas price point. Confirmed against Axis itself on 2 Aug 2026: the Atlas tile in the bank's own credit-card catalogue carries a lone 'Know More' with no Apply Now — the treatment reserved for retired cards like the Vistara trio and Aura — and on the Atlas product page the apply button is still in the HTML, wrapped in a comment so it never renders.
- 1 Apr 2026ITA Airways joins Star Alliance as member 26ITA in SkyTeam (exited April 2025 after Lufthansa took control); Rome and Milan thin spots on the Star award map → Full Star Alliance member from 1 Apr 2026 on Miles & More; Rome Fiumicino and Milan Linate add 350+ daily flights to the network
A year after Lufthansa walked it out of SkyTeam, ITA Airways completed the crossing: from 1 April 2026 it's Star Alliance's 26th member, plugging its Rome Fiumicino hub and Milan Linate into a network of 17 fellow members and 1,150+ destinations, with Miles & More replacing the Volare programme. For Indian points, this is a routing buff — Maharaja Club and KrisFlyer, the two Star currencies nearly every premium Indian card can feed, can now earn and burn on ITA metal, so a Star award to Italy no longer needs a SkyTeam programme in the middle. Rome via ITA joins the same award charts your HDFC, Axis and Amex points already reach.
- 1 Mar 2026Air India drops its Bengaluru and Mumbai nonstops to San FranciscoBLR–SFO 3x weekly and BOM–SFO 4x weekly nonstops → Last flights 27/28 Feb 2026; SFO becomes Delhi-only, DEL–SFO up from 7 to 10 weekly
Air India's March-2026 schedule quietly ended two of its longest flights: Bengaluru–San Francisco flew for the last time on 27 February and Mumbai–San Francisco a day later, with all SFO flying consolidated onto Delhi at 10 weekly frequencies. Bengaluru's tech-corridor nonstop — the only one from South India to the US — is the real loss; Star Alliance award space on both city pairs vanishes outright, and every Maharaja Club or partner-mile redemption from BLR or BOM to the Bay Area now carries a Delhi connection. Coming months after Washington Dulles was suspended, it leaves Air India's US map thinner than at any point since the Vistara merger.
Straight answers
The questions people actually type about Air India Maharaja Points — answered from the same data as everything above, with the same numbers.
What is 1 Air India Maharaja point worth in INR?
Our desk marks Air India Maharaja Points at ₹0.80 a point — so 1,000 points are worth ₹800 and 10,000 are worth ₹8,000. That is the number every route on this page is priced with. The ₹0.45 floor is the redemption you can always fall back on; the ₹1.70 ceiling is the best sweet spot we have actually verified. The mark is trending up, last reviewed 11 Jul 2026. The valuation index prices it against every other program we cover.
Which Indian cards earn Air India Maharaja Points?
8 Indian cards earn Air India Maharaja Points outright, and 82 more feed it by transfer. Best-ranked earners: Axis Bank Vistara Infinite Credit Card, Air India SBI Signature Card and Club Vistara SBI Card PRIME, the best of them at 2.4% reward rate. The card list above names each of them with its rank, its ratio and what one of its points becomes here.
Can I transfer Axis Bank points to Air India Maharaja Points?
Yes — Axis Bank PRIMUS earns Axis EDGE Miles and moves them here at 1:5, which makes one of its points 5.0 points and ₹4.00 of value at our house mark. 82 cards feed Air India Maharaja Points; it is the best of them. Everything that bank's points can reach — caps by card tier included — is on its transfer page.
When did Air India Maharaja Points last devalue?
1 Apr 2026 — Axis closes the Atlas to new applicants. We logged it Open to new applications → Closed to new applicants — existing cardholders unaffected. That is the newest cut on our record. The nerf log below carries 50 tracked events touching Air India Maharaja Points, and the program grades high on nerf risk.
Verified against Air India's own documents on · our house ₹/point, ₹0.80 today
Not published , and we will not invent it: how long posting takes.
Every document behind this page — 3 of them, each with the day we read it
- official Air India's own redemption page — Maharaja Club sells every award as a cheaper Value fare booked early or a dearer Prime fare near departure. That spread is what this mark is priced against.
- official The Points Calculator, Air India's official answer to "how many points" — and its own copy says the fares shown move with booking time and seat availability. Air India publishes no award chart at all.
- official Maharaja Club terms — the member pays applicable taxes and surcharges on Air India, Air India Express and Star Alliance awards, and Air India may change the points required at its discretion.