Revising my answer - for some reason I thought you were on a UK flight.

You have 2 options:
1. Bid right away for a seat - https://www.airindia.in/bid-upgrade.htm
2. Try you luck at the airport for a fixed cost - https://www.airindia.in/get-upfront-airport-upgrades.htm

Based on how you're seeing seats fill up you could try either strategy...

Both are cash upgrades. The chances of more award space opening up is quite close to zero.

Not sure about point upgrades but you can definitely use cash upgrades at the airport or bid for an upgrade here - https://www.airindia.in/bid-upgrade.htm

Thanx for your feedback.

More seats for redemption in business will not open up. AI does not offer more than 2 business class mileage seats on these routes.

Bidding or buying up at the airport are your only options.

There goes the final nail in the coffin. 😆

Booked 2 economy seats and will bid.

About bidding for an upgrade...I've now flown IAD-DEL/DEL-IAD three times. The first two times I bought a ticket from an online travel agent, the last time directly from Air India. I'm never allowed to bid for an upgrade on these tickets. What am I doing wrong?

From the information you've shared - nothing. At the same time there's not much information you've shared for anyone to say anything, including whether there was actually any seats available to upgrade to. The T&C for bidding are on AI's site - https://www.airindia.in/bid-upgrade.htm. If you can't bid you can always use the GUU offer - https://www.airindia.in/get-upfront-...t-upgrades.htm. I have no comparative data so folks with experience can say if bids are in any meaningful way cheaper than GUU. I think roughly the same benefits apply - with more luggage in bid, revenue lounge access in GUU being the major difference.

Step one of AI's FFP revival seems to be to get it's old patrons back + get new ones.... status at half the price! TMC - for 37.5k miles, GEC for 25k miles & SEC for 12.5k miles.

And now for the catch!
Evaluation Period: 01st July ‘22 to 30th June ‘23!

With 2 months left, whoever becomes GEC/TMC will be purely by accident.

Huh?

What is it that you're confused about?

Is anyone taking up AI's 2 month challenge? Or accidentally qualifying for it?

This should have been a 6-9 month challenge... that would have been the right way to go.

Booked an award seat for a family member. The booking went through but the points didn't get deducted. So I called the help desk to confirm if the ticket is valid.

Was told that ticket is not issued as you cannot book tickets for other people as you don't have 5 revenue tickets in the last 1 year. This is a new rule started from May 8th 2023 since the new website has started. Would have been embaressing if the passenger would have reached the airport to board the flight.

In March 2023 I have booked more than 10 award bookings for various family member. They reconfirmed these tickets are valid.

Just for info for everyone.

Air India... "we really don't want you to fly with us".

Interesting. I'm assuming they are still allowing bookings for the member itself, even if they haven't had 5 revenue bookings in the last one year.

Also, I wonder if they will permit a booking if the member is flying along with another person.

My wife & kids have definitely not had 5 revenue booking in the last one year so they would fall under this category.

For members I think it's 1 booking. For others it's 5. The others whom you're booking for don't have to have taken 5 flights in the last year.

But this is a super hard and bad rule. Earlier it was to start redeeming you had to have that qualification. It was a one time thing. Now its every year? That's stoopid.