delanotre

Two examples on the discrimination against the France residents by Air France, national company.

First, if you live in France, you need 20% more miles to get Silver status, 50% more miles to get Gold status and almost 30% more miles to get Platinum, than if you live anywhere outside

Why this discrimination, as today most of flights in France do not earn miles.

Second, if you are a Blue-Biz (BB) member living in France, you earn BB points depending on your booking class:
for example you pay 8000€ for a CDG-NRT (RT) in First and you get only 500 BB points!

But, if you live anywhere outside France, you get BB points depending on the money you pay (1€=1 point), so 8000 BB points for my example.
8000 vs 500 ie 800% more!

When you know that you need more than 1500 BB points to earn a return flight to LED (St Petersbourg), it is another real discrimination that I don't understand.

Christian-SN

That's new to me. I only collect points based on this table.
http://www.airfrance.de/DE/en/local/...ner_bareme.htm

Can you tell me where you found that information?

Perhaps you misread. Because the spending ratio is 1P = 1€.

delanotre

If you are a France resident, as I write, it is different than, as you, if you live elsewhere, outside of France.
the earning chart:
http://www.airfrance.fr/FR/en/local/...biz_bareme.htm
and for multi-destination, it is less
http://www.airfrance.fr/FR/en/local/...stinations.htm

orbitmic

Same in the UK, we definitely do NOT earn 1BB point/€ spent, far from it. delanotre, in fact I think that you have misread and confused earnings and spending. The earning scale is in fact far less than what you describe for French people (e.g. for CDG-NRT return in F, you say you earn 500 BB credits, while we in the UK only earn 100!) However, one credit then equals £1 to spend.

In other words, you say that you need 3.5 CDG-NRT returns in F to get a free CDG-LED return (in Y I assume), with the same flights, we would earn £350 worth, which will get us a 'cheap' non-flex advanced purchase Saturday night stay CDG-LED but certainly not a flexible or non-Sat stay one.

Re-FB, rightly or wrongly, the difference has been there from the start (including under FP), and if anything, French flyers with an abonne card are now in a better position than before as they earn segments on all domestic flights. Also, note that MiNi fares don't earn level miles within Europe either (not just domestic) and if anything, many booking classes that earn 250 miles domestic earn only 187 within Europe. That said, the difference whiich has also been found in other airlines programmes is not so much an attempt at being 'fair' as, rather, an attempt at managing numbers. Empirically, the vast majority of FB elite/elite plus members are apparently French residents and FB believes that (1) if it applied the ROW thresholds to France, the numbers would increase dramatically, (2) if it applied the French thresholds to ROW, almost noone else would apparently qualify except in the Netherlands and AF/KL would thus lose a lot of custom.

delanotre

Ok, I misread, due to 1BC=1€ (ambiguous) on the belgium site.
Sorry.
Regarding FB program, 66% of FB are outside of France
http://corporate.airfrance.com/en/le...e/flying-blue/

orbitmic

Different, yes, but different everywhere, and not 1BB credit per €1 spent. Of the three examples we have, for a CDG-NRT return in F, BB France earns 500 credit, BB Germany 400 credit, and BB UK 100 credit. So what Chirstian-SN and I were questionning was where you got the 800% more if you are abroad since, in fact, you get fewer credits for the same flights in both the UK and Germany. Moreover, in France, you get bonus credits if using an Amex-AF card while there is no such deal either in Germany (AFAIK) or in France).

Finally, redemptions are different in all systems with the French version apparently mirroring the FB system (x points = trip) while the UK version follows the system of cash equivalent used by some other airlines (such as NZ I believe). Note that you can't do part payment in points (only full payment) and using cash for upgrades is even more restricted than with FB.

Finally, there is a logic behind all those different systems. Historically, each airline had its own small company programme (voyageur rewards for AF, Blue Bliz for KL, and some others for AZ and DL). They were merged almost everywhere but each time a different 'pattern' was used depending on who was dominant in a given market. In France, despite the name, the model was thus obviously the old Voyageur Rewards while in the UK where KLM has historically been a strong alternative for companies in the regions, Blue Biz was the dominant model.

The most absurd thing of all to me is not one of discrimination but that - at least in the UK - you still can't credit flights booked with the airline in another country! So if you have a BB UK account and you buy a ticket on airfrance.de it brings you ZERO!

orbitmic

I'm not questionning at all what you are earning but on the rest I may be missing something obvious but when I clicked on the link provided by Christian-SN I see that a long haul flight in F (direct or connecting) gives 200 credit one way so 400 return, so to me it looks very different -- apologies if I am just misunderstanding your description of earnings, or perhaps what you are describing is true in some other countries (again, every country seems different, so maybe this could be as you say in some other countries? US maybe? Somewhere else) but at any rate not in a blanket way for everywhere outside France.

delanotre

Yes, I agree, I did not see the others charts, just remembered that 1€ =1BC that is to be read 1BC=1€...
Thanks for clarify ^
I wrote to moderator to modify the title.

orbitmic

No worry. To be honest, I still think it IS rather ridiculous that BB has different rules across markets and also the rule I mentioned about only tickets issued in the country of account residence qualifying.

flyertalker00143

moreover when you live outside France and join FB, you earn sign-up bonus

i've never heard of earning this kind of bonus in France....

orbitmic

I haven't heard of a sign up bonus for outside France for many many years (before FB, and at that time that very same bonus of 3000 miles was perfectly available to French members too!), either except one single country which seems to have them occasionally. Definitely no such thing in the UK for instance. Again I think we need to differentiate between "some specific countries have this" and "the rest of the world (ie all but France) have this", and sign up bonus is definitely in the former category.

JOUY31

Done

delanotre

Merci ^

bodory

At to this that French BB T&Cs explicitely state that BB award tickets no longer accrue FB miles.

orbitmic

UK BB awards don't (and never did) accrue FB miles either. I would be very surprised if BB awards anywhere did.