Oxymore

^ I love your wording.

Agreed. I guess I was just relieved to know that those promos still exist, and selfishly looking at one route that especially interests me and comes up at -50%.

NickB

I just booked a ticket for my parents today. They are flying to the US West Coast and their idea was to use their FB miles to upgrade to business. They tasked with finding the best solution.

So, I did a quick calculation given their budget and miles and did a quick comparison with BAEC. They are FB ivory/BAEC blue so basic members in both schemes.

Their best solution with FB was an H class ticket at approx €1200 and 70K miles to upgrade. They would have earned about 6150 miles back, so a net cost of 63850 miles.

The alternative with BA:
buy a cheap premium economy ticket (T class) for about €1250, then upgrade the transatlantic legs for 25000 miles. They earn about 15000 miles back, so net cost in miles: about 10000.

So, in summary:
with AF/FB: €1200 + 63850 miles;
with BA/EC: €1250 + 10000 miles.

So, a no-brainer really. And they are now booked on a BA A380 for their trip to California.

And why not buy a premium eco with AF and upgrade it, you might ask?
Miles-wise, it would be quite reasonable: 30000 miles spent, approx 16000 earned back, so net cost of 14000. A bit more than BA but not hugely so (well, 40% more but 40% of not a great deal so still quite OK)

The problem, though, is with the ticket: since A class is not an upgradable class, the cheapest upgradeable class was S. And S was over €2100.

There are going to be exceptions on some routes and the above is clearly purely anecdotal. Still, IME, it is nonetheless fairly typical of a lot of routes and explains why use of miles with FB does not, in my view, tend to compare terribly well with BAEC.

irishguy28

Why does everyone appear to think that Promo Awards in Long Haul were gone?

It was clear from the statements announcing the changes to Long Haul Awards that they would be retained, albeit with the 50% discount no longer guaranteed.

NickB

I took Gajan as meaning that there is no comparable level in the FB programme to the HON level in M&M.

Both BAEC and M&M have a "super-elite" level (HON and GGL, respectively) but not FB, whose highest level (plat) is more comparable to M&M SEN or BAEC Gold.

Maybe there should be one but there is not and, in that sense, I agree with Gajan that they are not really comparable.

orbitmic

Fully agree. There was never any suggestion promo awards had disappeared (at least not yet). So all we have learnt is that FB is happy to make a mockery of some of them, bringing the 'promotional' award fare to much higher levels than what one can actually get paying full fare on the old band till the end of the year and thinking that their customers are idiotic enough to book, which, to be frank, I find rather insulting*.

PS: another 'enhancement' that FB offered itself with this new promo award cycles is that a number of Promo Awards are now only available for a single month (1/8 - 31/8) rather than the full period by the way! I predict that within a few years, if promo awards still exist at all, our FB artists will offer 10% off "normal" (ie further increased) awards on specific days!

* Or again, they have simply not even thought of it, which would perhaps be more consistent with my earlier theory that the people in charge of FB are simply intellectually challenged...

Kölner

@San Gottardo : http://www.flyingblue.com/promo-awards.html

orbitmic

Actually, I would personally say BA silver as the main difference between BA silver and gold is access to 'special' lounges which you do not get with FB Platinum. (In many ways, BA silver is in fact probably better than FB Platinum but let's not go there...)

brunos

Indeed BA silver is comparable to (and probably better overall than) FB Plat but let's not go there.

brunos

So I just flew back to HK in wonderful CX J (seat really comparable to BA new F) for the routine 60K.
And I just discover upon landing that AF has a MAGNIFICENT PROMOTION for the same route at the same 60K. This is the first time that I could use a promotion from HKG for a very long time, except that it is in mediocre nonreclinable Premium economy, non-changeable, nonrefundable, noncancellable.
Is that a joke?

San Gottardo

Thank you Kölner!

Makes one wonder why they are not featured in the Flying Blue section of the AF website. Or not wonder, depending on what conclusions one draws from everything that was discussed in this thread about FB and their ways of working.

There may be a mis-understanding. My initial point was a comparison of what happens to award availability if you fly a lot (i.e. >600k miles). In one program, M&M, you end up with that super elite level (which increases award availability), in the other you end up in a tier that does not improve award availability. The fact that one program has it and the other not was precisely the difference I wanted to point out.

Had the question been "what does FB's super-elite status offer compared to what M&M super-elite status offers" then indeed it would have been right to say "not comparable, because FB does not even have a super-elite status".

My comparison was one like "which airline has the biggest plane, Air France or BA?" and to come to the conclusion "AIr France, because they have the A380 which BA does not". Gajan's response to that would be "you cannot compare the size of planes between AF and BA because BA doesn't have the A380". An almost stimpyesque twisting of the logic I'd say

No, it is not a joke. It is

1) FB's strategy
2) AFKL's way to "put the customer back in the centre"
3) A mystery as to why they believe that 1) is a good way to achieve 2)

orbitmic

Having recently suffered AF's PE again, I would label it disastrous rather than mediocre especially for hkg which has night flights. Let's be clear: you will not get any more sleep in that seat than you would in Y. If you don't want to sleep then indeed "mediocre" might be a good description.

bodory

I would even say that you would get less sleep in W seat than in some Y ones. The other day, AF made a mistake and put us in the W cabin after I purchased some Y seats (yes, their IT is so bugged that it allows this). I called them to inform about the mistake and asked for good Y seats instead of bad W ones. Needless to say they were very very surprised of my request (and about their bug too).

Sorry for this short off-topic.

cityflyer369

I will say it again on this ocassion: I sleep better in W, 5 hours on an overnight long-haul, compared with 2 hours in Y. So dont overgeneralise.

irishguy28

Oh, but BA now does! And it's set to fly LHR-FRA-LHR this summer, if the BA board is to be believed.

irishguy28

Does Flying Blue really believe its own shpiel?

I've never really felt that FB was in tune with my needs - and I definitely feel less like this is the case now!


How did Flying Blue get all those votes? I've really been thinking about that. I reckon that it's all down to the American readers of those various blogs who only discovered the "Promo Awards" in the last year or two. Lots of exposure on how to transfer Amex MR points to Flying Blue miles (which, by the way, is a FAR MORE GENEROUS exchange rate for US members than for EU memberse), and then snaffle a choice ticket for a relative song (they should have been appalled by the taxes, though).