And these echo the questions that came to my mind when I saw the new tables. In fact, I was even sad enough to rink up and ask, and here are the answers:

Gold card holders still get a one-class upgrade on itineraries that are solely bmi, and redeemed at the bmi (rather than *A) rates. This means we can continue to book at economy rates on short-hauls, and get sat at the front.

I queried the wording on the intra-EU *A awards, which are colour-coded to indicate "direct flights only", and pointed out that many of the featured destinations cannot be reached on *A without a connection. I was told that if there was no direct flight, a connection would be allowed within the award (but no stopover!!), so a flight to, say, Malta, would be allowed to connect in FRA/VIE since so *A partner flies direct from UK to Malta. So, you could do UK - Malta for 1125 in biz. which isn't bad! (Also Greece, Turkey, Russia and anywhere else that hasn't got direct *A flights).

The rules state that Back-tracking is not allowed, and all travel must be by the most direct route unless routing restrictions prevent this. I tested this with the award to Male (Maldives), which is listed as a base 2500 points. The only way to fly *A in F-class from the UK to MLE is on SQ via SIN, but this is a pretty big (over 1500 mile) backtrack! I was told that in that case (the only way to get there involves a detour) such a trip would be allowed. So, for 5000 points you can fly to the Maldives in SQ F, and get a free stopover in SIN to boot (in fact, since that is the same number of points as is required to go to SIN, you could argue that you get the trip to MLE for free.

There are still many questions to be asked, and loopholes to be probed, but overall this doesn't look half bad.

Overall inpressions:

BD "the business" class is overpriced at 4,000 points, since you could fly in F *and* get the US connector to anywhere in the continental US on any other airline. I cannot see why BD would want to dis-incentivise it's own members in this way. I know they want their "C" to be a mega-premium product, but it still flies with empty seats, and it has got to be better to allow those seats to be used, rather than having to pay another partner to fly your own people in "F" because it's cheaper for them.

The intra-EU award levels are broadly much better, especially if selected connections are allowed. You can't do what you (used?!) to be able to do with Swiss, i.e. route all the way around the houses to use up your 8 segments, but you do seem to get some pretty cheap business flights, as compared to (say) BA.

US/Canada Awards to Zone 3 look good in C, and better in F (cheapest used to be LH for 3800 ish, and you still needed to buy the connectors at both ends) especially to destinations that need a domestic flight.

Awards to SE-Asia look better on the asian carriers (which seemed to be put artificially high in the old tables), so, assuming that there is actually some availability, these look better value, especially when travelling to destinations that require a connection (since you get a stopover outside the EU). Malaysia and either SIN or BKK in C for 3750 looks like a pretty good deal (basically this is 6.7 C-class flights to the US, assuming connectors, which is a better ratio than most).

We loose out a bit to the Far-East, since you used to be able to do LH-F for 4800-ish to Japan or Hong Kong, but the award is now 6000. However, you do now get a choice of airline, as ANA/SQ/TG used to be completely out of the ballpark.

Intra US flights are a joke. They were before, but they're now completely out of order! The only sensible looking one is US-Hawaii for 1000 (1500 C, 2000 F) which compares quite well with other programmes (assuming you can get a seat).

Some of the glaring loopholes have been closed, like the VIE-SYD one already mentioned, I've a feeling that some new and interesting loopholes have been added to compensate though......

The RTW award looks a little expensive, but could be fun if you've got the points, however a 10 sector limit means that you are not going to have many choices over routings.....

Overall, I'm looking forward to working with it.....

Ken.

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