Originally Posted by
yulred
Does it? I thought AF/KL were tied up with 9W for domestic flights. I know the old KL had a lot of tie-ups with 9W. 9W has a pretty decent domestic system. Of course, I have no clue about what, if any, ST miles one can accrue on them, but then again, the domestic routes aren't all that long (assuming ST pax connect in BOM, DEL, BLR), so they won't be missing out on much.
Poor as in, AF/KL used to fly to a lot more Indian cities than they currently do (like my home city MAA - where I was plat on AF till they withdrew the direct flight on a 343). They withdrew all those flights and replaced them with interline deals (not even codeshares, the airline will sell you tickets with those segments on IT / 9W flight codes).
When I'm flying long haul to the states or Europe, the last thing I want to do is to fly domestic to DEL or BOM and connect from there, just adds several wasted hours to my travel time.