Flying Blue (Air France, KLM, and Other Partners) - Open Miles rip-off (moved from KL)

I have tried searching for any date between now and April 9, which is the 10 month outer limit, for an award ticket between DEL-JFK and not a single date has turned up at the official rate. Now how is that possible?

Of course, each time, I'm prompted to spend twice the normal amount!

Try to call them,when there is no Webaward period, the shacky online booking engine is simply not as reliable as calling FD or FB ( Imagine that !! )

However the routes ex India are known to be heavily overbooked, so it would surprise me, if KL or AF open up much award inventory to be honest...

I tried several dates over the next 10 months to CPT, JNB, YVR and NYC with the same result.

The effect of Open Miles offers is to devalue balances by 50%, in spite of the 1:1 promise. :td:

Despite that I also found availability of standard awards to be very bad at the moment, I still think that the open miles option is indeed a benefit for us members.

You can't compare standard award tickets and open-miles tickets. Those tickets are fully flexible and you can change your flights without a problem as long as there is one full-fare seat left for paid tickets. It's like comparing a Z fare to a J fare - and the J fare will easily be double cost...

There are situations in which you would like to book a ticket short term and the only available tickets are full fare, so not within the budget for most of us. And then an open miles award would really be worth the miles they charge...

However AF/KL should really work on award availability on some routes. I can understand that they do not open many seats on heavy booked routes. But at least a few should be available. And if one tries to book 10 months in advance (which is the maximum) it strikes me as unfair if there are no seats at all available... Looking back to the not so old "Royal-wing times" it was the absolute unique benefit of FD to open up award seats for top elites easily. O.K., those times are gone - but the change is to harsh IMO.

I agree that you should always call if you first don't get availability using the internet award booking tool. When I checked early this week on the internet about flights to LAX I was getting nothing on the dates I wanted on the web but did get some limited availability in economy when I called -- and at the normal rate, not the double miles rate. The difference in availability between internet and phone was also my experience with FD.

So far (and I've had FB France (+33-1-58-68-68-68)) on the phone about 3 times this week already) wait time has been just a minute or two and the agents have been very helpful in checking various award bookings for me. The only problem being so far that the email confirmations I have been promised have not arrived yet (though since I have the PNR numbers I am not too concerned).

Got to agree and I have tried the same for dates over the next coming months looking to burn my miles to just about anywhere.

Always the same only the "Open Miles" option, what a rip off.

To give an example I can do an EDI-CPH July in Economy for the great "Open Miles" price of 90k miles. The same trip before would have been 25k or half of that when they had a web award.

It goes without saying that I did not book this and decided to go C class on *Alliance.

To give an example I can do an EDI-CPH July in Economy for the great "Open Miles" price of 90k miles. The same trip before would have been 25k or half of that when they had a web award.

That can't be right?? Can it?

There are situations in which you would like to book a ticket short term and the only available tickets are full fare, so not within the budget for most of us. And then an open miles award would really be worth the miles they charge...


This is about the only case where the "open miles" option might play to the better. In most other cases, the existence of teh "open miles" program enabled the airline to limit the regular availability of awards to the minimum (or to nothing in some cases). Look at Continental as a great example of how a system like this works (and how many complaints people post about it).

Despite that I also found availability of standard awards to be very bad at the moment, I still think that the open miles option is indeed a benefit for us members.......

Ralf, I really cannot share your view.

In FD, always 4-7 days before departure, suddenly masses seats in D-class bucket opened. So almost never a problem to book a last-minute biz-class award ticket. (except to some destinations in far east).

now in FB, you will see it will get harder and harder to book your award-tickets for standard mile level.

So it is a MAJOR DETERIORATION , and surely no extra benefit.

just my thought.

Of course this is a question of the viewpoint. Two years ago I was stranded at MIA as I missed my booked flight. For two hours it really looked like if I had to book a biz oneway to Germany for something like 4.000€... FD awards were only available untill two days before departure and as it was high season chances were slim. So an open miles offer would have saved me some more grey hair... ;)

Of course if the introduction of open miles option has led to fewer standard awards been made available this would be foul play. But frankly I don't have hard evidence that this is the case at the moment. My impression is that for the last three or four months availability of FD awards was equally bad. If anybody has made other experience, I'm open for discussion of course...

That can't be right?? Can it?

Just checked again. Out 22nd July, in 24th July EDI-CPH.

Return is 90,000 Open Miles in Y.

If I search out only I get the option of 25k for Y or 40k for C.

Then if I search the inward leg I get the option of 25k for Y, 40k for C or 20k in C on a Skyteam award.

Guess the booking engine needs some work then.

pmcg - just checked and i guess you were right! What a rip off. Wasn't that a Biz class flight from the Far east to North America under the old scheme! :mad:

"Open Miles" option, for Air France and KLM flights only
Economy Class From 90 000 Miles

Agreed. Definitely a rip off! I have tried numerous days up to April 2006 for FRA-JFK-FRA, there is no one single first class award seat for regular award. The only thing that is available is open miles.