texas gold

I just spent the last two hours hopelessly plugging away a myriad of combinations to obtain an award booking from AMS to IAH. To my surprise, not ONE was offered without OPTION miles. I must have tried 50 different date combinations, weekends, during the week, and everything in between.

I have been a loyal Gold for more than 8 years and have never once had any difficulty obtaining a award booking, and now THIS???

Worse off, most of the options were not non stop but through Paris...As if I would ever turn in 100000 miles to fly economy AND transfer planes in CDG.

Is this a mistake, or just them being Generous?

Does anyone know if Continental's One Pass a better FFP is?

beaubo

I had the same frustration with the booking engine, things looked VERY bleak.

Then, I called FB HelpDesk. Amazing chap- SEBASTIAN was incredibly helpful and informative.

We checked a JFK-DKR in J in late July. No space on booking engine. No space when Sebastian checked JFK-DKR.

Sure enough, when he checked JFK-CDG and CDG-DKR SEPARATELY, he found space and could manually 'marry' the two segments for just one regular (not Open Miles) award.

I applaud Sebastian's effort, but am disappointed that the new booking engine does not seem to (at least in its early stages) an improvement over the old clunky FD booking engine!!

onlysuites

Just spent 20 mins on the phone with an agent. Now can someone please tell me why/how it is that I can not get a Biz award flight from UK to Vancouver anytime in August.

Skyteam must have tons of flights flying there everyday and I wasn't at all fussy about routings/dates/times. They can even send me on a 5 leg journey if they wish.

But NOTHING available with normal miles.

If i could meet the person who set up this new program I wouldn't talk with him, just SMACK him one on his face.

KLM/AF YOU WILL NOT GET A SINGLE PENNY FROM ME IN THE FUTURE.

Threy

To be honest, one can complain that it seems that award availability is down from what is used to be , but to complain not to get a seat in C to YVR or IAH is really not worth it.IAH has always the prime northatlantic flight for KLM and not surprisingly they launch an all C class flight in autumn.

YVR in August is peak cruise season and peak holiday season in Europe and in addition to that not really served well by SKY at all...

It makes sense to complain about several new FB enhancements, but not about some destinations not available during super high season...

Richelieu

OK, so what should we test for availabitly? I checked CDG-JFK, CDG-LAX and CDG-NRT in April 2006, everyday till 16th (the further we can book in advance...) and found:

• no availability in F on CDG-JFK
• no availability in C on CDG-JFK expect ONE day (Apr 4th)
• availability in Y everyday on CDG-JFK, except on Apr 15

• no availability at all on CDG-LAx, except a single seat in C on Apr 12

• no availability in F on CDG-NRT
• availability for 3 days in C for CDG-NRT
• availability everyday in Y

Either they pulled out a lot of seats, or the online booking engine is broken.

bodory

Did you try with the "open miles" option or with the normal level of miles?

Richelieu

Normal miles... Of course, they are not totally sold out in Apr 2006, and show great availability with open miles. Same if you try to book a revenue fare.

onlysuites

Yeah i know what you are trying to say, with it being peak season and that. But come on!!!!!! 1 seat.... they can't fine me 1 seat in 30 days via all the hubs that Skyteam has in North America. It would be different if i only wanted a straight flight. But I am willing to go any which way they decide to send me.

How many flights must Skyteam have across the pond daily? They can't put me on any one of them and then a connection from whichever hub i land in (even in Y for the North American) section was fine with me.

I think its just AF/KLM trying to clear out our points by giving us no option but to book Open fare awards. And that really gets me angry.

Jenbel

Threy, but it isn't just these two destinations.. there are getting to be post after post after post detailing the problems many people have in booking award flights to many destinations over many time frames. While I could accept the mile burn-off/upgrade flurry to avoid the now hideous restrictions on upgrades from Y, there is a point where one has to realise that the award flights are just not there anymore...

Just another thing brought to us by our new "generous" program :rolleye:

onlysuites

Just out of interest, how many flights does Skyteam have from UK, France, Amsterdam everyday?

Anyone care to take a wild guess?

Emma65

I tried, just looking really, for a flight BRS - Milwaukee (can't remember the code), 'round the end of june and got routed with CO and asked for 75k of my points for it.

My business partner is currently in YYZ. He tried getting a flight on points to go there. Impossible. He flew a rather expensive coach ticket with CO, yesterday, to get there. And he booked well in advance.

Emma

Threy

Did some searches as well today and found availability to be comparable with the last months of FD to be honest.FB is certainly inferior to FD, but at least so far award bookings seem to be possible for a wide mixture of destinations and classes, including DXB, JFK, MXP, EDI and BKK and even CSA flights being offered.

Comparing the late FD with LH for example was still in favour of KLM, when it came to award availability, but I fear with those bigger airlines and schemes, supply and demand simply do not work out that good anymore.

Comparing KLM`s 2 million members and seat miles available on longhaul flights with the capacity relations of AF, now FB or LH shows us that AF and LH are certainly bigger , but have 3 or 4 as many as members and alliance partners, so I fear we were members of a very good FFP with FD...