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Book Air India’s new A350 business class from London to Delhi for £1,631 return

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Yesterday we ran a full review of Air India’s new A350 business class cabin from London to Delhi.

Rhys was, frankly, blown away by how good it was.

By a total coincidence, Air India has launched some good deals on this flight if you need to travel by the end of June.

Air India's new A350 business class from London to Delhi for £1,631 return

You can fly, return, in A350 business class from Heathrow to Delhi for £1,631.

Here’s an example:

Air India's new A350 business class from London to Delhi for £1,631

For less than £100 extra, you can book a flexible ticket allowing a full refund.

You need to check the aircraft type when booking if you want the A350. Book any other aircraft and you will have an older plane without the excellent A350 suite seats.

You can get it cheaper ….

There are cheaper deals from Frankfurt (€1,658, so £1,415).

For example:

Air India's new A350 business class from London to Delhi for £1,631

However, these are on a Boeing 787-9 which does not have a seat as good as the A350. When you factor in the cost of getting to Frankfurt, the deal doesn’t compare well to the Heathrow one.

Where to credit

Air India is a member of Star Alliance. This means that, as well as its own frequent flyer programme, you can credit your flight to schemes such as Lufthansa’s Miles & More, United Airlines MileagePlus or Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer.

Air India's new A350 business class from London to Delhi for £1,631

How to pay

If you book the Heathrow deal and are paying in Sterling, the best deal for paying for your ticket is American Express Preferred Rewards Gold. This is free for a year and currently comes with a bonus of 30,000 Membership Rewards points.

Amex Gold earns 2 points per £1 spent with airlines. These convert to 2 Avios or many other airline and hotel programmes. No other card can beat this rate for general airline spend.

If you book from Frankfurt, the only ‘miles and points’ credit cards with no FX fees for Euro payments are the two Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercards.

If you don’t have one of those, your best bet is to forget miles and points and use any 0% FX credit card you have. Saving 3% on FX fees is better than earning a few points.

Conclusion

These fares are pretty easy to find until the end of June.

You can read about the Air India A350 business class seat in our review from yesterday. We strongly recommend booking an A350 service because these are by far the best aircraft in the Air India fleet.

You can find out more about Air India’s A350 on its website here.

The main UK booking website is here.


How to earn Star Alliance miles from UK credit cards

How to earn Star Alliance miles from UK credit cards (April 2025)

None of the Star Alliance airlines currently have a UK credit card.

There is, however, still a way to earn Star Alliance miles from a UK credit card

The route is via Marriott Bonvoy. Marriott Bonvoy hotel loyalty points convert to over 40 airlines at the rate of 3:1.

The best way to earn Marriott Bonvoy points is via the official Marriott Bonvoy American Express card. It comes with 20,000 points for signing up and 2 points for every £1 you spend. At 2 Bonvoy points per £1, you are earning (at 3:1) 0.66 airline miles per £1 spent on the card.

There is a preferential conversion rate to United Airlines – which is a Star Alliance member – of 2 : 1 if you convert 60,000 Bonvoy points at once.

The Star Alliance members which are Marriott Bonvoy transfer partners are: Aegean, Air Canada, Air China, Air New Zealand, ANA, Asiana Airlines, Avianca, Copa Airlines, Singapore Airlines, TAP Air Portugal, Thai Airways, Turkish Airlines and United Airlines.

You can apply here.

Marriott Bonvoy American Express

20,000 points for signing up and 15 elite night credits each year Read our full review

Comments (36)

  • Dominic says:

    Saw this yesterday whilst being intrigued by Rhys’ review – I thought they just offered unusually good prices to India!

  • BJ says:

    A quick 1 minute search showed it advertised elsewhere at £1610, and £1376 on Gulf Air if ok with a connection.

    • tony says:

      Som very keen GF prices coming up in J ex LON at the moment – spotted both SIN and DXB at what I consider pre-pandemic levels.

      Not sure if this is part of their 75th anniversary sale that ends 30.4 or something more permanent/

  • cranzle says:

    They have a tendency to switch you over to another flight by ‘claiming’ your actual flight is delayed or cancelled (and neither is true)…..

    So it possible one could book this and end up on another aircraft.

  • Manya says:

    Which hotel did Rhys stay at as part of this trip and will a review follow?

    • Rob says:

      Not sure BUT he told me it was very average and not worth a review.

      We are trying to avoid reviews of random 4-star hotels these days to be honest unless they have something special about them. I’m in a Hyatt Regency in Doha next week and not really feeling the urge to cover it, but we’ll see.

      • BJ says:

        Best HfP news this year 🙂

        Scope and depth of lounge reviews are excellent. New seat reviews are done well enough to dissuade me from bothering to look at the many others done elsewhere. By contrast, hotel reviews have always been a waste of HfP space IMO; nothing wrong with the way they were written, it is just that it is so easy to get so much more useful and in-depth hotel information elsewhere.

        • Rob says:

          Hotel reviews just need an angle – brand new, recently refurbished, high quality – just something to justify the space.

          The ‘here’s a Crowne Plaza built in 2005, not refurbished, no pool, sits next door to a Marriott and a Hilton’ isn’t a lot of interest ALTHOUGH sometimes we run them because its a cost saving to us. If Air India had asked us to pay for a hotel for, say, £500 and IHG had offered us a very average CP for free in return for a review we’d have take it.

          I doubt I’ll be covering Crowne Plaza Dublin Airport when there for a conference next month either.

          • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

            Lol

            Expect the room next to the lift shaft and cleaners cupboard and overlooking the bins for good measure!

          • ADS says:

            the Santry Clinic just down from the CP is very good – in case you need any work done!

        • ken says:

          The best hotel reviews by far were the readers “my favourite hotel” series.

          Hotels you’d want to experience rather than the chains.

  • Liz says:

    We just used Air India for an internal flight on our Indian tour. can i claim any miles retrospectively for Kris Flyer miles and how would I do that? Thanks

  • Jimbo says:

    I’ve only flown Air India twice previously and unfortunately after both flights my clothing and cabin bags came out reeking of curry. Now I like curry but I don’t want to arrive and be heading to a meeting where my clothes and change of clothes in cabin bags smell like curry. Plus the cost wasn’t cheap for their business class seats.
    So, regardless of how fancy those seats look, I’m pretty sure those seats, blankets and duvets will all end up smelling like … well… curry.

    • Rhys says:

      Nope.

    • Dominic says:

      This seems unlikely a story to me, to be honest. Planes are notoriously good at filtering air, and having flown to India more than 25 times.. not an issue I have come across.

    • Norfolk&Chance says:

      When I flew BA to Delhi i was alarmed to see a random open packet of ground coffee hanging from a wire in the toilet. The cabin crew told me they have to do it for the smell

  • sayling says:

    Convenience fee? Feels a bit LCC…

  • LittleNick says:

    Can the airline be used as a connecting airline for further onward travel in Asia or is the airline not really set up for that in terms of pricing/timings etc?

    • ADS says:

      last time I checked they had very limited range of destinations / frequencies … I’m sure that will increase, but compared to the ME4 their route map was pretty feeble when I looked

    • Throwawayname says:

      Bear in mind that India and China aren’t quite the best of mates – there are no direct flights between the two countries, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the People’s Republic discourages Indian aircraft from overflying it. There will definitely be some workable connections to places like SIN and KUL, but I don’t have a clue on pricing (though I did recently note they were offering an €800 premium economy fare from FRA to SIN and back).

      • Dubious says:

        Air India LHR to SIN often comes up with a ‘reasonable’ price – often circ. £2000, even over Christmas. The best connections seem to be via DEL (maybe a 3-hour connection so not great but could be worse). I’ve previously seen options to go out via DEL and back via BOM (of vv.) with a bit of engineering to schedule a day trip if desired…
        but a search I did earlier today can up with a connection via BLR. I assume that would mean a much older aircraft.

        Anyway – despite the temptations to try, mostly for the 2x mileage earning but also the opportunity for a side-visit on the way, I have always found one of the other StarAlliance airlines to offer a more competitive offering, so have never tried it.

        • Dubious says:

          PS. The onward flights from DEL – SIN (and I assume DEL – KUL) are on A320…so not very compeling if you can get a flat seat all the way.

      • GUWonder says:

        There is currently a big push to restart flight service between India and China either later this year or next. With the Trump regime insanity, India is finding itself in reassessing relationships and the Trump tariffs are speeding up an Indo-China rapprochement after a meltdown in ties following conflicts in 2020.

    • chiraagnt says:

      Air India appears to be aggressively targeting connecting passengers over its Delhi hub as well for the last few months. I have seen advertisements on the tube and on black cabs advertising flights from London to Bangkok/Singapore/Australia, in addition to the various Indian cities, and their pricing is competitive.

      As far as I am aware, this is just the first stage of their plan to build up Delhi as a huge transit hub as well.

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