Air India-SBI Signature credit card devalued big time

About two and half years back, Air India partnered with State Bank of India to bring two co-branded credit card variants - Signature and Platinum. At the time, I rated the AI-SBI Signature card as possibly one of the best credit cards around, in terms of mileage earning and related benefits. Effective 11 April 2016, however, all of that bites the dust, after a massive devaluation. Here's more...


Here are the changes in detail, and you can look up the summary announcement here.

Bonus miles earning

The AI-SBI card offered some of the best miles earning opportunities. These came from spends, both directly as well as from bonus miles for achieving certain spend thresholds. Base spends earned 4 AI Flying Returns (FR) miles per Rs 150 of spend, and 20 miles per Rs 100 for spends on Air India's website. That part remains unchanged. However, one of the best earnings came from bonuses based on spend thresholds, as follows:

Rs 300,000 - 20,000 bonus miles
Rs 500,000 - 20,000 bonus miles (incremental)
Rs 1,000,000 - 50,000 bonus miles (incremental).

In effect, spends of Rs 1,000,000 or more a year earned you an incremental 90,000 bonus miles, which was fabulous. That's been pretty much devalued, because the spend thresholds have been virtually doubled. Now you'll earn as follows:

Rs 500,000 - 20,000 bonus miles
Rs 1,000,000 - 30,000 bonus miles (incremental)
Rs 2,000,000 - 50,000 bonus miles (incremental).

AI is touting this as a 100,000 bonus miles earning, when in reality, the spend required is now double (up from Rs 1,000,000 to Rs 2,000,000).

FR Program tiers

Spends of Rs 500,000 or more entitled the user to AI FR Silver Edge club membership (Silver level on AI's FR program), and spends beyond Rs 1,000,000 earned Golden Edge club membership. While that's not changed, there is a sub-condition for the above spends. Now, these spends need to include spends of at least Rs 250,000 (for Silver Edge) and Rs 500,000 (for Golden Edge) on Air India tickets. Crazy!

Tier matching

Earlier, notwithstanding your status on Air India, holding the AI-SBI Signature Card allowed you to tier-match to a higher level based on your elite status with another frequent flyer program. Not any more. All such tier matches will be withdrawn effective 11 April 2016. You could try to tier-match before that, but AI's responses usually take a really long time, and so I wouldn't be hopeful of having such requests honoured.

Conclusion

Let's get real. With these changes - in particular, the doubling of spend requirements to earn up to 100,000 bonus miles - the AI-SBI card has lost its sheen, and is just not worth the Rs 5,000 annual fees, in my view. At those fee levels, some of the ICICI-Jet Airways cards or even the HDFC Diners Jet Airways credit card (even though the annual fee is Rs 10,000) is probably a better option. And coupled with Air India's latest other recent devaluation - of its Star Alliance awards - AI Flying Returns is no longer worth investing much time or energy over.

Readers: Do leave your comments and rants on this massive devaluation.

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