AI awards drying up?
 

I never had an issue finding award seats from the US to India, but now I cant see any for months on end. Is AI restricitng these award suddenly?

Or maybe they are snapped up early...their US flights always seem to have a pretty good load factor...BOM-EWR is nearly always full...it seems that they have to block off some seats ex-BOM and they almost always have to offload some cargo from that flight.

Which cabin are you looking at? And any specific US route?

NYC-DEL/BOM and vice versa. For the past few years was always fairly easy to find some availability in C and F.

Prices are higher and award availability lower since they joined Star Alliance. Used to be AI had the lowest prices in J for USA-India; now CX and (sometimes) EY beat their prices regularly. Awards must be booked ~310 days in advance when bookings open.

agreed....award availability used to be excellent with ai but now award availability between india-usa is extremely bad....

i remember booking 7 seats in first & business (2 in first & 5 in business) on a single del-jfk flight....now i can't even find 2 seats in either first or business....

I had a similar experience, but was able to pick up few seats from any AI served city (except BOM/DEL) by shelling out additional 5000 miles for the domestic connection.
That said, the direct flights seem to be sold out, but adding a connection works out.