Flying Blue (Air France, KLM, and Other Partners) - Aeroflot considerations

Not much has been written about Aeroflot in this forum, from a Flying Blue perspective, and I was wondering if any of you had any experiences to share. It is so difficult to find out the fare classes with some Skyteam partners, that I have given up trying to look and am just hoping that my ticket will be miles eligible. Hopefully it will be something like Alitalia, where apparently all international sectors yield miles.

I will be flying with them in June to St. Petersburg, with a change in Moscow. Is transiting Moscow relatively easy, or pretty scary? I am expecting signage to be written only in cyrillic there. Assuming there are no delays, I will have 3 hours to make the transit, which should be ok. I am presuming that one clears immigration at Moscow, and then continues to St. Petersburg as an internal domestic flight.

Is Flying Blue mileage credit automatic and pretty efficient? Or is it the usual nightmare of retroclaims and so forth?

Although I can only speak for an international KL-SU transfer and not update you on the immigration/transfer procedure, I can assure you signage at SVO is in clear English. Nothing scary about it, it is a relatively modern airport comparable to most other European airports. At least that's how I experienced it!

All 4 SU flights (including 1 KL codeshare) posted to my FLying Blue account within a few days, and were according to FB's partner earning schedule: http://www.klm.com/travel/nl_nl/flying_blue/earn_and_spend_miles/flying_blue_partners/index.htm

You'll be fine.

Not much has been written about Aeroflot in this forum, from a Flying Blue perspective, and I was wondering if any of you had any experiences to share. It is so difficult to find out the fare classes with some Skyteam partners, that I have given up trying to look and am just hoping that my ticket will be miles eligible. Hopefully it will be something like Alitalia, where apparently all international sectors yield miles.


One way to take a stab at finding the fare class is to pull up the exact same itinerary on ITA Matrix (http://matrix.itasoftware.com). This will show you the fare basis for each fare component on the ticket, and if you get the same price from ITA that you paid through wherever you purchased the ticket, it's a reasonably safe bet that's what you booked.

I am expecting signage to be written only in cyrillic there.
Come on, virtually every airport on earth nowadays has English on them, and SVO being a SkyTeam international hub - of course there's English.

It is so difficult to find out the fare classes with some Skyteam partners, that I have given up trying to look and am just hoping that my ticket will be miles eligible.

I agree it can be difficult to find fare classes on some booking engines (eg: www.alitalia.com ...) However, the Aeroflot booking engine (http://www.aeroflot.ru/cms/en/booking) shows the fare basis at the 'Review Itinerary' stage.


Is Flying Blue mileage credit automatic and pretty efficient? Or is it the usual nightmare of retroclaims and so forth?
My recent SU flights have posted quite quickly, with no retroclaim needed.

One way to take a stab at finding the fare class is to pull up the exact same itinerary on ITA Matrix (http://matrix.itasoftware.com). This will show you the fare basis for each fare component on the ticket, and if you get the same price from ITA that you paid through wherever you purchased the ticket, it's a reasonably safe bet that's what you booked.

I agree this can be a useful way of guesstimating a fare class. However, it is not foolproof. For example, you may see (eg: on ITA) a mid-priced fare for a return. However, on the booking engine, what you might really be getting is a low-priced fare oneway, and a high-priced fare the other, so the total averages out to the same as the mid-priced fare. Which may in turn mean the lower fare is less flexible, and earns fewer miles, than expected. (This scenario may not be very likely, but it is possible...)

Personally, I won't use any booking engine that will not show both fare basis and fare rules, before a purchase is confirmed.

SVO is as any other major international airport around the world, no need to worry about the signs as everything is well marked.
As for SU segments, I didn't have any problem, they were posted quickly every time.