Originally Posted by
BA_Pax
After a fairly underwhelming F return to Dubai with BA in the last week, and to satisfy my curiosity, I’ve just taken 4 short haul flights with Air France, who graciously gave me a Flying Blue Ultimate back in February. My observations below.
Positives
App is good with real time updates
Downsides
No group 0 (but always Group 1) boarding. You board with all other status and biz class passengers. That can be quite a few.
No hotel equivalent such as Hilton Diamond for GGL
I have enough forward bookings to keep GGL this year and next but I’m disappointed at the lack of any new benefits - or any messaging at all. I went to an event in London more than a year ago and nothing promised has materialised. As another poster observed, the lovely ladies in the Premium Team talk a good game but I feel it’s all lacking execution, which tells me the higher ups either think it’s all wonderful or lack appetite for further significant change.
I concur with all your observations, but would like to add a little to those above.
The app is good, but can be too enthusiastic at getting you to the gate - I scooted from the lounge after a 'boarding now at gate XX' - to find lots of passengers and no sign of gate agents for about 15 minutes (then a few more minutes set up, and a few minutes #boardingnotboarding in the jetbridge).
The lounge staff will often (not always) ask if you want to board early or late. If early, they will arrange with the gate agents to escort you to the aircraft door. (Even ahead or alongside PRMs once, which I found a little embarrassing - stopped at that point and dredged up 'apres vous, Madame' from my very old French).
Flying Blue and Accor partner for a miles and reward points double-dip, and I've had a small number of XP and status points/ nights added as well from this.
One extra from me - because AFKL use Embraers a lot intra-Europe there tend to be more 'bus and/ or stairs' events, even where a jetbridge is co-located.
Heartily agree with the 2025 GGL experience - if they can't even manage to produce a GGL card on time, the phrase 'knees-up in a brewery' come to mind
