Last November Flying Blue (KLM & AirFrance’s loyalty program) announced major changes, we described the new program was the most confusing loyalty program imaginable. One of the things they announced is that as of June 1st all seats would be bookable with miles and that they would be ditching their award chart and offering dynamic pricing based on the origin destination and date of flight.
They have now released a rewards calculator that will show you how many miles are needed for a particular flight. The issue with the new calculator is that it shows you prices “starting from” (e.g this is the lowest they will cost). There is no way to input dates yet, so I suspect often times it won’t price out at the lowest level. Another issue is that by eliminating award charts Flying Blue is able to devalue the program on the fly with little oversight. This is something Delta has employed with much success after the removal of their award chart. It looks like Flying Blue will also continue to offer promo awards after June (Delta also likes to do this).
I did a few searches and it seems like some routes are more expensive than currently and others are slightly cheaper. I wouldn’t expect them to make massive changes when the new program is first launched as that is when they will face the most scrutiny. The real test will be when we will revisit this in a year or two years time.
Hat tip to OMaaT
The route I fly most often (East Coast – Eastern Europe) also has a lower price. But who knows what’s going to be the availability of the tickets at that price point … I’m very skeptical of this change, of course. This whole deal with us raking up points and using them to fly all over the world was simply too good to last.
Case in point – last year I took a nice trip from US to several countries in South East Asia, in business class, using points that cost me next to nothing to get. The price for the tickets would have been $9000 per person (!). So yeah, no wonder the credit card companies and the airlines are tightening the screws.
On some routes there are big changes. Hong Kong to Bali: 25k today, in business, with a local partner (Garuda). 50k after Jun 1st.
Can’t get any quotes from Austin.
hi Blue – If going that route I price out of IAH. Rent a car and drive the 3 hours is better. And direct flights. Also, any flight out of AUS will be on Delta, most likely to ATL or JFK.
NYC-TLV RT in Business goes down nicely from 125k to 106k