As regards achieving elite status on KLM, they have a most complicated system of awarding points, because it is affected on certain routes by the airline flown as well

Points are awarded according to a published routing chart, e.g.

PER SEGMENT:
LON - AMS = 350 points ( 700 for business class). However if you fly KLM uk (a KLM susbsidiary ) from London Stansted to AMS all passengers earn 700 points.
AMS - DTW = 1950 points ( 3800 BC )
ALL NWA domestic US flights = 750 ( 1500 BC )

To reach Royal wing you need 24000 points or 40 segments !!

However to redeem points can be hard, as per segment :
LON - AMS = 5000 points ( 10000 for business class)
AMS - DTW = 17500 points ( 35000 BC )
ALL NWA domestic US flights = 7500 ( 15000 BC )

The one advantage of this method is that one can redeem a single segment or upgrade a single segment.

To upgrade any single segment on a paid fare the points redeemed are equivalent to the difference between the award points necessary, i.e. to redeem an upgrade on AMS -DTW is 17500 points ( 35000 - 17500 )

How on earth this table was first calculated is beyond my understanding as the points value of a flight has not a lot to do with the actual distance, but seems to be a combination of the economic value of the flights, as well as the distance, as well as the region of the destination.

For instance

Flight , WP mileage, FD earn, FD redeem
AMS - MSP, 4166, 2250, 20000
AMS - Bombay, 4266 miles, 2850, 20000

AMS - Sanaa,3331 miles, 2500, 17500
AMS - BOS, 3457 miles, 1950, 17500

AMS - Johannesburg, 5579 miles, 3600, 25000
AMS - LAX, 5584 miles, 2850 ,25000

The absurdities really appear when you need to change planes in the US, as for instance...

BOS-MSP-LAX earns me 1500 points, and to redeem is 15000, but BOS-LAX on a direct service earns me 750, and to redeem is 7500.


A very out of date table can be found at : http://www.klmuk.com/dutchman/pointsguide/table.asp