AshleyB

It really is VERY annoying to see how much we French members are discriminated in this new FB. Why someone with 41k should have better benefits than someone with 89k is a complete mystery.

Belgian in Paris

A French resident BA Executive club member be gold with only 800 points and a UK based one with 1500 points, a German Lufthansa Senator need 150 000 miles and a French resident one only 100 000 ....

The same apply for the 3 more important european airlines.

They know that it is more difficult to attract client out of their own market and then give them better price and a more easy acces to Gold/Plat level.

For you it is the price to pay to fly direct.

If you would like to have more Frequent Flyer perks and don't care to fly not-direct, fly BA or LH, you will be top Tier before the German/UK residents thanks to the fact that you are living in France.

NickB

In addition to what Belgian in Paris has already stated, French residents also get EQM on their Amex Gold. I am not aware of any other airline offering this and it does make the targets much, much easier to reach.

mat_bkk

I read all the leaflet from FB seems that for GOLD and PLAT there is access to lounge at all time because the do not precise "only if you fly SKYTEAM"

Someone knows ?

Matthieu

ALEXIS2004

I think you are trying to be too ambitious with AF. I seriously doubt this would be the case although it would be quite a great benefit if it were the case.

ALEXIS2004

As Belgian in Paris stated, this is common policy from national airlines for many countries. This way, they attract business which could very easily go elsewhere.
Putting the issue of miles aside, what would you say if it was common knowledge that often the cost of a ticket is cheaper from an outside departure via CDG than from CDG itself?? To be more clear, you could pay more for a CDG-PEK-CDG than for example FCO-CDG-PEK-CDG-FCO or IST-CDG-PEK-CDG-IST.

ranskis

that is a great argument for AF/KLM to achieve status with qualifying segments. While some airlines such as SAS limit qualifying segments to their most expensive fares, air france has a nice policy that makes all skyteam flight (except french domestic flights in some cases) count as qualifying, whatever the fare paid.

=> 30 segments for Gold/ST Elite+ => 7.5 return trips via a skyteam hub (such as CDG), even students can afford it!

and what can be a kind of compensation is that even N/L fares that will get only 25% of the miles will still count as qualifying segments if i remember well (flyaircanada, is it still like this?)

Next month, I will not fly direct Paris-Stockholm, i'll fly alitalia via Milano with a 23 hours transfer time, just to enjoy a bit of Italy, visit some friends... and get 4 qualifying flights on my F+ account (for the return trip)!

Falco Peregrinus

Much, much easier? Unless you pay for expensive business tickets with your own Amex Gold (800 to 4,000 euros each time) you would more or less get, say, 10,000 or 15,000 q-miles every year. In many cases, it is not allowed by corporate travel policies to pay for flights with one's own c-card. However, if you're the boss...

There is still the option of paying your new car or flat with your Amex gold

NickB

I don't do expensive business tickets. My employer only allows the cheapest economy tickets. In any event, most of my travel comes out of my pocket, not my employer's. Frankly, I would much prefer the higher thresholds applicable in France and having my ccard expenses counting towards status. I would expect that the average yearly spend on ccard by elites tends to be higher than the 10-15K Euros you suggest.

Richelieu

Esp. when the company allows/makes mandatory the use of personal means of payment to pay for travel expanses. I think one pays more on hotel/restaurant than on plane tickets generally.

graraps

Well...Amex isn't as widely acceptable as Visa/MC (and even Maestro!), and my feeling is that French people use cards less often than Brits and Americans, so, unless you use the card all the time and/or go out of your way to use establishments that accept Amex, €10K sounds quite realistic for me, even for seasoned elites.

stimpy

I got my kit in Los Angeles recently. I'm Platinum thank goodness. I noticed that we have new phone numbers on the back of the card. We have the same AF reservations number in France. Does that mean all elite levels use the same number? We also have a Dutch number for elite KLM reservations. That's a nice new benefit. But this card only has the US numbers for FB whereas my F+ Rouge card has both US and French numbers for F+.

Also on the back of the card I see the logos for Kenya Airways and NWA. But no other Skyteam logos. Why is that?

Also I only got one luggage tag. Is that the same for everyone else? With F+ I got two tags.

My expiration date is 3/2006. So I guess I have a lot of flying to do quickly! I only have 23K miles so far on AF this year.

rcs85551

Flying Blue is the frequent flyer program of KQ as well as the frequent flyer program of NW in Europe (at least based on the info we have so far), so that's why the logos are there.

It is one luggage tag only for everyone.

nldogbert

Please don't jump into conclusions that all students will be able to do that! Based here in Western Europe, doing those required trips even with transfer will still cost more than 1600 Euro (based on approx. 200+ Euro a ticket, which is not that easy to find all times). I don't think as a student, anyone will spend such money just for a status that they will not be using frequently and remember students usually travel in groups.. so I guess they would prefer staying in their groups rather than parting and enjoying lounge access or whatever benefit that comes with it. Anyway, I am sure lots of students here will have their parents status to enjoy when travelling on family trips

Anyway, fares on Skyteam airlines have not dropped to those of SAS cheapest economy.. do it is not really fair to compare SAS policy to those of the ST's members.

Just my 2 cents.

AshleyB

Returning to Paris from Delhi (via AMS) I had a lovely time with KLM staff who assured me that FP Gold is not a 'priority' card and so would not do priority baggage handling or waitlist on the ams-cdg flight. The agent in AMS practically threw the card at me with a sneer. I'm always nice to the people at the counter as they have sometimes a hard job but the KLM ladies really push it. At Roissy also I have ben told that I cannot be eligible for seats at the front of Y. I thought this would happen. French resident FB Gold is not very good! I think maybe LH will be better overall. It is a pity!