Xandrios

So, internationally, what has practically changed compared to the old earning chart:

GoLight P-L:
* Min miles -150
* Earnings -25%

GoLight H-Y
* Earnings -25%

Flex P-T:
* Min miles + 200
* Earnings +5%

Flex S-L:
* Min miles + 400
* Earnings +10%

Flex H-Y:
* Min miles + 500
* Earnings +25%

Business
* Min miles + 200

Overall...I'd say not too bad at all. Sure, cheap GoLight fares will be earning a little less, but the Flex ones will earn substantially more than they did - as they should. I'd say that this is not so much a devaluation, but rather a re-balancing to make sure that more expensive fares get a fairer share of miles.

Yreal

Its not thaaaaat bad.

i mean compared to how airlines like sas butchered the Mille earnings... or earning based on ticket price...

flex gives more, so I guess more incentive to actually use the upgrade vouchers?

headingwest

I just worked out my current bookings and it works out that I'm slightly down, but that's only because I was forced to book Flex fares due to Aegean's policy over the last few weeks. Moving forward, I will not book Flex fares because I don't need flexibility or checked bags, so my earnings will go down quite a bit. This means that I will probably shift a much greater proportion of my collection of miles onto other airlines.

I can see why Aegean has made this change and it's not devastating, but for me it's probably a habit changer (i.e. book minimum A3/OA flights in Flex to upgrade, and look elsewhere for the rest of my miles).

Xandrios

Are other European airlines much better though? The cheapish LH/LX/LH/SN economy fares either don't earn anything at all, or a percentage that is likely below that of GoLight Aegean tickets..

Which leaves us with SK (No miles on Light fares & not very practical unless you travel to/from Scandinavia), LO (generally 50% or less earnings), TAP (big mess with their earnings on cheap fares). So...maybe TK or MS...two airlines that personally I don't really want to fly with...

I guess I see things from the perspective of being based in Greece, and things may be different if you are elsewhere located...but still, earning rates are low across the board.

giorginho

Though I too of course don't like the decrease in earnings in some ticket categories, I would point out, that this isn't one of those changes that you can say "oh, well, I guess then I won't credit my miles to Aegean, but rather to someone else" (while actually flying on any other airline than Aegean), but a case where you do (or would) actually fly Aegean or a route served among others by Aegean as well and that you still do want to credit your flown miles to Aegean!!!
I'm not that much of a "frequent flyer", but can anyone point out any example at all, where one could fly the same routes that are served by Aegean on another airline and gain more miles on Miles&Bonus for those cheapest possible fares (and I don't mean comparing Aegean's U with SAS's U or the equivalent thereof, but comparing fares in direct relation to what they actually cost, since the argument here is "paying 20-30-40€ more for the flex ticket")? This is at lease how I go about when looking for tickets (how much does it cost at Aegean? 100€ for no bag and 800 miles. OK, how much is SAS on the same day? 150€ for no bag but 1600 miles... well the extra 800 clearly aren't worth it, oh wait, what? Ryanair flying for just 40€ but 0 miles? -Book Ryan!). Besides, the "argument" "not paying more for a bag I don't need" will automatically exclude SAS (and I can imagine that their 100% credit on "smart" fares only still exists thanks to some marketing budget) and the last time I checked, no other airline that flies routes serviced by Aegean has anything better to offer with their cheapest fares than 50% of the miles flown! Most of them credit 0 to Aegean, some 25% and some 50%, which is what Aegean now, unfortunately, also offers as a minimum!

To put things into a better (or just much different) perspective: I have quite often booked international (say Germany) Go Light fares for taxes + 24€, which, when booked via OTA's, can easily become "taxes + 12€"...! For the net price of 12€ I get not only to fly a distance of 1000 miles, but also to collect 1000 M&B miles!!!! If you try to buy 1000 M&B miles during a 100% bonus promotion that would still cost you 12,50€, which is... more than what you actually paid to fly!!! You could take 8 of those flights and then book a very expensive Go Light fare that was X (award) availability (this has quite often, though not always, been the case with some 200+€ tickets!), but even without such a redemption you're actually causing losses for Aegean, by receiving miles that are worth more than your ticket! Domestic go light fares were available for 4€! Even if they only gave you 200 miles for that, that was still at least 200 miles too many for that price! Now they did this "get 2x as many miles" promotion and booked HER-ATH for taxes + 18€, which is including a bag for which they would normally charge you 22€ on the absolute cheapest 4€ go light fare!!! You can see it as if the bag price is now from 22€ down to 14€ or that you can fly your bag from Heraklion to Athens and that they will pay you 8 Euros to fly with it on the plane :P. And give you 400 miles on top! (of course it's once again very nasty on Aegean's part to get people to "book with 2x the miles" and then cut them down by 50%, but that's a different subject)

This is, of course, one of the (main) reasons that drove me into booking with Aegean, instead of, for example, Ryanair, or German/Eurowings (most of the routes I 've flown so far were served by these).

Try flying Germanwings/Lufthansa etc. and you get for the same 1000-mile-distance exactly 125 M&M miles or 0,000 M&B miles, try Ryan and you get 0,000 no matter what FFP you have.
Can there be exceptions, where you get more A3 miles for the same $$ flying in economy class on a different airline? If they do exist, those were and will still remain just that: A very few exceptions.
So if about 200 less miles on such a route will make such an impact, one can consider shifting to a whole other FFP altogether (Asiana? Turkish? Egypt? These seem to credit 70-75% of the miles flown on the cheapest Aegean fares).

From my (very personal) perspective, I am actually quite happy with that ever-so-slight increase in earnings on flex fares! It was only logical that these go light earnings wouldn't hold on too much longer and in a sense I even consider it to be a "fair" move by Aegean.

PS. You were still paying for bags before they introduced the go light fares, regardless whether you needed them or not. Now the old "economy" prices are all "go light" and the flex category is one above that. I still have the (quite strong) feeling, that many FT'ers are not flying for the "right" reasons, even when only considering their own calculations, unless of course those I am referring to are eventually not making good on their own decisions.

headingwest

Location is a big consideration. I've always been more than happy to fly Aegean when going home to the UK, which isn't really logical considering I'm near VIE. The main attraction was that I can earn plenty of miles for roughly 20 EUR more than a direct route, plus I get an overnighter in Athens. Adding Flex will push the price up at least another 40 EUR, and I just don't need the extras. Looking forward I will most likely just book Austrian (in addition to my 4 A3 flights) and earn the bulk of miles for requalification with longhaul flights.

That said, I'm sure there will be plenty of offers in the future to tempt me towards Aegean. It's still a great airline, and as others have suggested, this change could have been much worse. And in many ways it actually makes sense.

KLouis

Obviously, you're not flying LH, AF, etc. And obviously not LH TATL in business P! Otherwise, you would not be asking the question

giorginho

You can book Austrian to Athens and get those "quick" 750 miles and book Aegean Athens to London :P... That is of course, if your Austrian ticket is issued on M, U, H, Q, G, V, W, since the other 50% of the discounted fares will earn you 0 miles! So yes, of course it depends on location (though again, if you're doing VIE-ATH-LHR just to barely reach gold I do have to question how much you are actually flying to make this worth it), but it mostly (if not solely) depends on fares!

A quick follow-up on my post above with 1 example: ATH-OTP used to give 400 miles in either go light or flex "P" fare, it is now 250 miles for go light, but flex costs 11€ more, is flexible, has a bag that costs 25€ to add to a go light fare and gives 600 miles instead of 250 in go light or 400 before these changes...
Even the ATH-BER route posted suggests that Aegean has revised the price difference between go light and flex, as Germany-Greece routes used to have a 40€ surcharge for flex tickets, now down to just 20€ (my search right now shows this as just 14€ difference!), even though the bag alone costs 25-30€?
(it looks like they have reduced the cost of the bag for the next 12 months by 5-10 Euros...)

headingwest

So they have officially updated (corrected) the chart on the website. Interestingly, Business has gained an extra 20% over the chart published earlier!

Xandrios

Great observation. ATH-AMS used to have a 45 euro Flex-price, now it costs 18 euro only. But...this is also due to the 30% discount that they currently have going on. When searching outside the sale period the Flex-addition is 25 euros on this route. Still 20 less than before though...which is absolutely great!

It looks like Aegean is trying a new pricing tactic with the pandemic. With a 45 euro fee (90 roundtrip) many pax would probably not buy Flex unless they really had to. Maybe now that almost everyone has an inclination to want some extra flexibility, having the lower Flex price will end up to be more profitable - as probably the majority of pax will be paying for that option.

headingwest

The website has been updated again with this additional information. (Table A: new earnings, Table B, old earnings)



So it seems that bookings made before 16th June retain the old earning rates.

https://en.aegeanair.com/milesandbon...rlines/#Aegean

Yreal

I do like how they promote flex now giving more Milles..

Archon1995

Interestingly, the new earning charts are just blank spaces for me, whether logged in or not. The Calculator does match up to the rates headingwest shows, though.

They revised the earnings notes as well.

romans

they are changing it everyday anyway they need someone to align texts on website!!! brrrr

alanw

Also UA, LX P fares. Somehow though, the same P fare on AC earns 200%, so I've been flying them a lot more lately. Luckily the Z fare on those tickets is usually not much more. But it's a lesson I learned the hard way!