Air India offers the ability to use Flying Returns miles to upgrade for a very long time. However, earlier it used to cost 75% of the miles required for an Economy Class upgrade to get into Business Class.
Then in 2016, this changed to 60-190% of an Economy Class redemption, depending on the ticket class you are booked in. Air India did add the ability to redeem miles up to 2 hours before the flight later.
I’m not sure how this worked out for them, given Air India sort of became desperate to sell upgrades. It came to this that they’d keep sending SMS or emails to passengers even when you’d stand for boarding. I was in Business Class in July, however, I kept getting messages to upgrade. To the cockpit maybe?
Anyhow, Air India has now sent out a teaser, where they are telling us that they will drop the cost of mileage upgrades.
Air India Upgrade mailer
There is no news on when this is going live, but Air India certainly wants us to know that we can Levitate (fly?) and Elevate (Upgrade?) for cheap now.
I’ll keep you guys posted on how this moves forward. In the meanwhile, do you have any insight on which way will this go?
It is permitted only on Air India flights on any of its domestic and international routes operated exclusively by Air India flights with Air India flight numbers.