Flying Blue (Air France & KLM) - Award ticket weirdness with business class switching to economy

My last business class award ticket was on multiple carriers, AF then KL then AM. Both the AF legs, when I went to check in, showed up as economy. I had hell checking in for these at the airport as they had to spend about 20 minutes each way fixing the ticket. Fortunately I had the original booking printout which showed that this was a business class ticket.

Now I have another business class award ticket, this time a non-stop long haul on AF. It was all booked long ago with seats in row 3. Today I got an email which showed one leg in economy and the other leg lost its seat assignment. I called up FB and they fixed the seat assignment, but swore the ticket was business class. However when I look on the website, my booking still shows economy on the outbound.

What the heck is going on at AF/FB? Has anyone else seen this? Or is it just my rotten luck?

What fare bucket are you booked on?

IME, there is a misunderstanding between AF website and Amadeus. If you are booked in E long time ago for example, it is possible it will show-up as Economy.

It is M outbound and O return. As I understand it, M is a special class that only Platinum Elite members can book into. Not sure what O is, but it is marked Class Affaires on my booking.

M is indeed the Elite booking class for Elites in Affaires on North Atlantic. But as M is also an Economy bucket for the rest of the world, I am not very surprised that it shows up as Economy.

O is normal inventory for Affaires.

You may call FB or Le Club to get a confirmation of your Affaires ticket and a seat assignement.

Yes I called them and they gave me the above info. But like I said in the OP, on my previous award ticket, I showed up at the airport, LYS in this case, and they gave me an economy boarding pass. It showed up as economy in on-line check in too. So I don't think this can be blamed on Amadeus, right? If I bought the ticket on the AF website it should all be internal to AF, right? Wrong?

IIRC AF uses Amadeus also for check-in. As Amadeus may consider M fare bucket as an Economy one, it is not surprising me that you could be given a Y boarding pass. Of course they are wrong, so be prepared to argue at check-in (in LYS or elsewhere) to get your J boarding pass.

Gosh if this is true, it must happen for all such tickets. I'm surprised they haven't fixed it yet. Or maybe not. :(

It would also mean that online check in is not an option for Platinum members on M tickets. Ugh.

I had been checking this on the KLM.com website, which still shows my outbound in economy. But just now I checked the AF website and it shows me correctly in Affaires on both legs. Even more confusing!

When are they due to merge the reservation systems of AF and KL? I thought it was supposed to have happened by now?