From Tomorrow, the Cheapest Flying Blue Award Buys You Less

Air France-KLM’s Flying Blue programme introduces branded fare bundles for award tickets on bookings made from 8 September. Instead of one award price per cabin, there will be three: Light, Standard and Flex. The current entry-level pricing survives, but it now buys the Light bundle, which strips out the flexibility and inclusions that used to come with the award as a matter of course. Getting what an award ticket bought last week means paying a higher mileage price for Standard or Flex. That is a devaluation, whatever the framing.

The detail is where it bites. Light awards allow no changes and no refunds, and in economy and premium economy they do not include a checked bag. Business Light keeps a checked bag but drops lounge access, which is an unusual thing to remove from a business class ticket. Standard restores flexibility for a fee and adds lounge access; Flex adds free changes and refunds and seat selection at a substantially higher mileage price. Tickets already issued are honoured under their existing conditions, and elite members from Platinum upward keep their benefits regardless of bundle.

One important limit: the change applies only to travel on Air France and KLM. Award pricing for partner airlines booked through Flying Blue is unchanged, which for a lot of North American members is the more interesting part of the programme anyway, given how often Flying Blue is used to reach SkyTeam partners. Members sitting on balances should look at what they were planning to book, since a partner redemption that was already competitive has just become relatively better against an Air France or KLM one.

The change lands while the US Department of Transportation runs a formal inquiry into airline loyalty programmes, examining whether the way carriers value miles and unilaterally rewrite the rules is unfair or deceptive to consumers. Flying Blue is a European programme and not the subject of that inquiry, but the pattern it illustrates is exactly the one under examination: a currency that customers earn under one set of terms and spend under another, with the terms changed by the issuer, at will, on a few days’ notice.

Sources: One Mile at a Time, The Points Guy