Yesterday I tried to book a trip using quite a few Flying Blue miles (almost 400,000) on Air France... it was a round trip for a family of five from IAD to TLV via CDG.
Long story short, everything went fine until the last step, when the website told me I had to call Air France to finalize the reservation.
Air France couldn't help me. They told me to call Flying Blue. When I did that, I reached someone who barely spoke English, but nevertheless managed to convey that I had to go to the airport with ID, birth certificates, etc., with both myself AND the passenger in order to actually ticket my reservation. This was physically impossible so I gave up.
I've seen a lot of people complaining on the Internet that this happened to them, and of course even when they got to the airport there was nobody there who knew how to help them.
To be honest I was doing a collection of things which collectively may make them suspicious, but I promise they're all totally legit:
- it was a new Flying Blue account that I just opened
- I transferred in the miles from American Express Membership Rewards
- I was not flying myself; I was trying to redeem miles for a ticket for my brother's family so they could join me on vacation in Israel. They live in D.C.; I live in New York.
None of those things (as far as I know) are a violation of any rules.
Has anyone encountered this "go to the airport" nonsense? I'm working with American Express to try to get my miles back since nobody at Flying Blue would really tell me what was going on. Requiring customers to go to the airport to ticket an award reservation is a little bit much, don't you think?
Thanks!