Award flight · one-way
Delhi → Hyderabad on points: 6 options, and the guesswork is finally off the board. The FULL April-2026 Maharaja pull — every domestic cell, taken straight from Air India's own points calculator rather than from the partial tables the trade press reprinted — does price this trunk: 5,000 in economy and 20,000 up front. The desk had estimated exactly 5,000 off the published tier and the two bracketing Delhi trunks, so the number did not move; what changed is that it is now a first-hand read rather than an inference, and it can take the crown. Air India owns the pair on mainline metal — both airport tables say so, and Air India Express does not touch it — so Aeroplan bands the identical seat off 786 miles. Count the rupees before you book: 5,000 Maharaja Points are ₹4,000 against Aeroplan's 7,500 at ₹7,500 in the back, but ₹16,000 against ₹12,500 up front. House chart behind, Toronto in front. 2 rows are first-hand chart reads.
The play · economy
Which card mints this?
+7 more ways in — the full funnel, ratios and ₹/mile side by side →
One of your cards is in those 7 — see it in the funnel →
| Program | Metal / routing | Points | Surcharge | All-in ₹ | vs play |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air Canada Aeroplan the play | Air India nonstop (Star Alliance partner award) | 7,500 | — | ₹7,500 | the play |
| Air India Maharaja Points | Air India mainline nonstop (Star Alliance), Value tier — Air India Express does not fly this pair | ~5,000 est. | — | ₹4,000 | 0.5× |
| IndiGo BluChip | IndiGo nonstop — BluChip, dynamic (revenue-priced) | ~10,400 est. | — | ₹5,200 | 0.7× |
The play · business
Which card mints this?
+7 more ways in — the full funnel, ratios and ₹/mile side by side →
One of your cards is in those 7 — see it in the funnel →
| Program | Metal / routing | Points | Surcharge | All-in ₹ | vs play |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air Canada Aeroplan the play | Air India nonstop (Star Alliance partner award) | 12,500 | — | ₹12,500 | the play |
| Air India Maharaja Points | Air India mainline nonstop (Star Alliance), Value tier — Air India Express has no business cabin and does not fly this pair anyway | ~20,000 est. | — | ₹16,000 | 1.3× |
Every first option on this corridor is dynamic-priced — no honest number to crown. The rows below say what we know.
| Program | Metal / routing | Points | Surcharge | All-in ₹ | vs play |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air Canada Aeroplan | Air India nonstop (Star Alliance partner award) | ~25,000 est. | — | ₹25,000 | — |
All-in ₹ = points × the program's house value (valuation index) + the sourced one-way surcharge; a dash means the carrier doesn't publish it and the ranking counts it ₹0 — the row's note carries the caveat. That surcharge is the airline's own cash charge on an award — YQ, as the notes below call it — and it is not the fuel-surcharge waiver your credit card advertises: that one hands back a hundred rupees or two at a petrol pump, this one runs to tens of thousands and decides whether the award is worth taking at all. “Dynamic” and estimated (~… est.) rows never compete for the play — the crown is always a verified, bookable price. Feed-ins come from the same transfer data as the optimizer, multi-hop chains included.
Chart-priced, not live seats. These prices are read off each programme’s published award chart and valued at our own house ₹/point. 37% of the 39,855 priced options on the board are stated estimates for programmes that publish no chart; they are marked ~ est. and never crowned the play. Nobody here can see whether a seat exists on your date — confirm the space with the programme before you transfer. Points that leave your issuer do not come back.
The cash on top of the miles. Air India Maharaja Points makes you liable for one if the operating airline levies it, without saying whether it does. Air Canada Aeroplan states it adds none on its own metal. Government taxes and airport charges are payable in every case. Almost no programme publishes the amount, so the desk carries each one’s policy in its own words — on its programme hub — rather than a number nobody published. 1 other programme priced here publishes nothing the desk could read.
Air India Star Alliance
786 great-circle miles sits in Aeroplan's 0–1,000-mile Within-Atlantic band — 7,500 points, on Air India's nonstop. Dearer than most cash fares on a hyper-competitive trunk, but it is, absurdly, the corridor's only published economy award.
Feed it: 3,750 Axis EDGE Miles (1:2) · 7,500 SBI Travel Credits (1:1) · 18,750 Axis EDGE Reward Points (5:2)
Air India Star Alliance
Verified 2026-08-08 against the full April-2026 domestic economy table — "DEL,HYD, old 5,000, new 5,000–13,500", so the Value cell held flat through an overhaul that cut 110 other economy routes. This row carried an estimate for months because the partial tables the trade press reprinted skip the pair; the complete pull does not, and the estimate was right to the point. Both airport tables agree on the metal: Delhi lists Hyderabad under Air India mainline, and Hyderabad lists Delhi alongside Mumbai and Tirupati while putting Bengaluru and Goa under Air India Express instead.
Estimate Air India publishes no award chart. Its own Points Calculator states that “Fares indicated above are dependent on the time of booking and seat availability”, and Maharaja Club prices every award either as a Value fare (the discounted rate for booking well in advance) or as a higher Prime fare closer to departure. This number is the Value-fare floor as sampled after the April-2026 repricing — not a published chart cell: Value space is not always available on a given flight, and the same seat prices higher once it is gone. Pricing model re-verified against Air India’s Maharaja Club T&C and Points Calculator on 2026-08-09.
Feed it: 5,000 IndusInd Reward Points (1:1) · 2,500 Axis EDGE Miles (1:2) · 5,000 ICICI Reward Points (1:1)
IndiGo
IndiGo runs the densest schedule on the corridor, but BluChip has no award chart — redemptions track the live fare at a dynamic ₹0.40–0.60 per BluChip, minimum 500, taxes cash-only. Nothing to plan around; useful only to bleed a balance onto a fare you'd have paid anyway.
Estimate IndiGo BluChip is revenue-linked ~Rs0.50/pt; ~= typical one-way IndiGo economy fare / Rs0.50 for ~786 mi - a rupee offset that moves 1:1 with the live fare. Own-metal only, no partners.
Feed it: 15,600 HSBC Reward Points (1.5:1 via Accor Live Limitless (ALL)) · 52,000 Axis EDGE Reward Points (5:1) · 31,200 HDFC Reward Points (3:1 via Accor Live Limitless (ALL))
Air India Star Alliance
12,500 in the 0–1,000-mile band for Air India's domestic business — fixed, chain-funded HDFC 2:1 / Bonvoy 3:1. A 2¼-hour narrowbody recliner; the row exists because nothing else on the corridor prints a J price at all.
Feed it: 6,250 Axis EDGE Miles (1:2) · 12,500 SBI Travel Credits (1:1) · 31,250 Axis EDGE Reward Points (5:2)
Air India Star Alliance
New row, 2026-08-08. The board carried no Maharaja business price at all because the desk could not find a DEL–HYD cell; the full domestic business table prints one — "DEL,HYD, old 25,000, new 20,000–23,000", a 20% cut. 20,000 is the Value cell and the number that ships; 23,000 is the band ceiling, which is exactly the trap that put a wrong price on three other corridors here. At ₹0.80 a point that is ₹16,000 for two and a quarter hours in a narrowbody recliner, against Aeroplan's 12,500 points at ₹1.00 — so the front cabin still belongs to Toronto.
Estimate Air India publishes no award chart. Its own Points Calculator states that “Fares indicated above are dependent on the time of booking and seat availability”, and Maharaja Club prices every award either as a Value fare (the discounted rate for booking well in advance) or as a higher Prime fare closer to departure. This number is the Value-fare floor as sampled after the April-2026 repricing — not a published chart cell: Value space is not always available on a given flight, and the same seat prices higher once it is gone. Pricing model re-verified against Air India’s Maharaja Club T&C and Points Calculator on 2026-08-09.
Feed it: 20,000 IndusInd Reward Points (1:1) · 10,000 Axis EDGE Miles (1:2) · 20,000 ICICI Reward Points (1:1)
Air India Star Alliance
Aeroplan prices Star partner awards by total distance FLOWN — only a CA$39 partner booking fee plus taxes. First is the published top cabin for this band; a connecting routing that flies farther can land in the next band up. Mirrored from hyd-del: the chart cell is the same in either direction, so 25,000 is the hyd-del number read back the other way — an estimate until this direction is re-read, and never crowned THE PLAY.
Estimate Reverse of hyd-del — Air Canada Aeroplan prices the zone pair or the distance band, not the direction, so this mirrors the hyd-del first cell one-for-one; the desk has not separately re-read the chart for this direction.
Feed it: 12,500 Axis EDGE Miles (1:2) · 25,000 SBI Travel Credits (1:1) · 62,500 Axis EDGE Reward Points (5:2)
Flying back? Hyderabad to Delhi on points (HYD–DEL). Or take the whole region: every corridor we price into South Asia — 380 of them. Or pick any two hubs — 2,450 corridors priced.