Alas, Santa brings bad news for AI-FR !

Their aesthetically pleasing new Star Alliance award chart is now confirmed. The changes take place from tomorrow, 23rd December 2016.

Here's their old chart valid till midnight, 22nd December 2016: http://flyingreturns.co.in/images/do...ward_chart.pdf

And here's the new one. valid from 23rd December 2016 onwards: http://www.flyingreturns.co.in/image...pdated_SAC.pdf

Salient Summary of Enhancements-
- Every single redemption is costlier now, other than some intra-region short flights.
- India to North America: Y redemption goes from 55k one way to 100k one way. 81% increase.
- India to Europe: Y redemption goes from 32.5k one way to 90k one way. 177% increase.
- India to South Pacific: Y redemption goes from 42.5k one way to 90k one way. 146% increase.
- First Class redemptions were 250% of Economy in the earlier chart. Now they go up to 300%.
- No Date Changes allowed once award is booked, you have to cancel award and start new.
- If you cancel the award, you will forfeit 20% miles used for booking.
- Cancellations allowed only till 72 hours before the journey.


Now for the silver lining (!) :
- New chart allows for either 3 layovers, or 2 layovers + 1 stopover. This eliminates a huge frustrating nature of previous chart.
Previous chart only allowed for point-to-point ticketing. e.g. a BOM-FRA-EWR award used to cost BOM-FRA sector + FRA-EWR sector points. That's gone away now thankfully (hopefully?).
- No Fuel surcharge ! ^
However, they will collect INR 1000 per sector as ticketing fees.
- Intra-region short flights < 500 miles are cheaper across the board now. For Intra-USA, flights < 1000 miles also come out ahead in the new chart. In all other regions however, flights > 1000 miles go up.


I wished they might have implemented online booking of partner awards to at least counter their grossly incompetent agents, but I guess I will have to wait for next Christmas for that! I might have to ask myself why the AI-SBI card still loiters around in my wallet anymore.

Thoughts?

P.S.: Those who have a redemption coming and might now look at the old chart wistfully, you might want to move a bit quicker !!