Platinum for Life
 

I am trying to make sure I understand the FB website correctly. I have called to verify and I get conflicting information depending on the rep I get. So, when I log in to my account, it states:

Platinum . Since 04-06-2005
If you stay 1 years more Platinum, you will become Platinum for Life.

So does that mean I need to earn enough miles or segments through 2013 and then I would receive this status or do I need to earn it this year and next. I am confused only because of the date and I know that it is for 10 years. I was, however, Frequence Plus Rouge before that.

Based on my calculations you need to qualify in 2013 and 2014.

I am PE from 1/1/2004 (my account is currently showing "you need 0 more years to qualify for LTPE") and it has been confirmed by the FB helpdesk that I need to qualify this year for PE too to qualify for LTPE.

Gajan

Are you sure they didn't make a mistake? This would mean you would be required to qualify 11 times (2003, 2004, ... , 2013). How would this fit with "Plat after 10 years".
And why would it then read "0 more years" on your account?
These two aspects suggest you will automatically be declared Plat for life in April next year.

It would seem that the "soft landing" rule [not enough miles for Platinum, but there were level miles accured during the year - therefore downgrade to Gold] has a higher priority than, or is invoked before, the "upgrade to Platinum for Life" check.

Which would mean that the "10 years" means you must complete 10 full calendar years AND also maintain your status into an 11th year (which is the one that gets you a 12th, 13th, 14th.... etc year for "free").

If it were me, I would just requalify again to not take any chances.

Your calculations are correct. Take the year in which you qualified plat for the first time, add 9 to it, and you'll have the last year in which you must re-qualify. It's no rocket science. The year you qualiy plat for the first time counts as 1, not as 0. The number you see in the FB account is a glitch.

But...am I missing something? Because, how did you qualify for platinum on the first day of the year after all the annual counters had just been set to 0, or did you qualify on 31/12?

What the counter shows on the website seems to be a quite basic mathematical error. By the way. If you have enough carry over miles to re-quilify, you still need to wait untill the actual 10 years have passed.

EDIT: Hm...if that's the case you need to add 10 to the first year of qualification...Now I'm confused...so you actually need to re-qualify 10 times for plat for life?

This is what the website says:

I am not sure how to interpret this....is it 10 consecutive calendar years at Platinum Level or 10 consecutive years Platinum level from the date of achieving Platinum? That's the difference between year of achieving plat for the first time + 9 , or year of achieving plat for the first time + 10.

At what point do they start counting down to life time plat? Mine reads;

Membership level

Platinum . Since 08-10-2011

You are Platinum since 2 years

That is precisely the question...

Gajan's text above states "since 01-01-2004", which is strange for 2 reasons:

a) in Flying Blue, it would be very very very impressive to qualify for Platinum status on the very first day of the year!
b) Flying Blue did not yet exist on 1 January 2004 (I presume, though, that Frequence Plus/Flying Dutchman equivalent status before FB came into being in June 2005 is taken into consideration!).

But at least it would suggest that those who had the equivalent Platinum status before FB came into existence are counted as full calendar years only.


I've always assumed - pessimistically - that given that the "first year" of Platinum membership is 1 year plus (i.e. when you qualified on 08-10-2011, you had Platinum for the remaining two months of 2011, but your "year" really was 2012), they ignore the "plus" and instead count your "years" (i.e only full calendar years), and that they require a further 10 full calendar years after initial qualification, counting from the 1 January after you qualified. So, it's not enough that you are platinum at the 10-year anniversary - 08-10-2021 - but that you MUST be platinum on 01-01-2022 [which inevitably means having earned 11 years]. But I really don't know if it's OK to just be platinum on 01-01-2021!

This is one of the reasons why having an official FB representative that posted here would be of great benefit.

Status during FP and FD is also taken into account as far as I know (was communicated earlier).

Your time as Fréquence Plus Rouge does not currently appear to be factored in. 04/06/2005 is the date that Flying Blue came into existence. If you had only just attained FP Rouge in early 2005 then this doesn't matter - but if you had FP Rouge, uninterrupted, for a period of years prior to the start of Flying Blue, then you need to get them to credit you with those years - assuming they still have records dating back that long at this remove!!!

However, based on the current start date (04-06-2005) then requalification in 2013 alone is not enough. Requalifying in 2013 would keep you platinum up until 31 December 2014 only - which is only 9.5 years when counting from 04-06-2005 (but, dependant on your getting Frequence Plus Rouge credit, and how many extra years this brings you, you may already have met the requirements, or requalification in 2013 may bring you to your adjusted target)

Or perhaps also 2015...if they count only full calendar years...

When the new cards are issued in March of each year, it should finally become clear when you have achieved Lifetime Status (the card should state this). If you do really want the status, then keep running until you know you have it....and if the status isn't granted when you thought it would, you still have 9 months left in that year to determine whether to keep running....

I recently inquired FB with the Plat for life question, having received yet another misleading mail mentionning how many miles I was supposed to accrue to get Platinum for life.

Now they reconfirmed -once again - that as I started with FP rouge on 31 dec 2003 (Y1, the very last day !) and requalified till 2012 (Y10) included, I do not have to requalify during 2013 and I will be officially considered Plat for life on 31 dec 2013 or 10 years exactly after first day of status.

All clear then. So indeed, the last calendar year you need to requalify is the first calendar year of achieving platinum status + 9. Also, the text on the KL/AF website should be interpreted as 10 consecutive calendar years at platinum level.

So the information Gajan received was wrong?

I first qualified in the 2nd half of 2004, and currently I receive emails saying "you need 44255 miles to become Platinum for life", which is exactly what I still need for reaching a total of 70000 level miles this year.
So this email suggests that for Plat for life you have to qualify 10 times, which in my case was/is 2004, 2005, ..., 2013.

I believe the information received is correct: I need to requalify this year to qualify for LTPE.

I called FB again yesterday for something else and then asked for clarification again regarding this. Especially since several of us have now received the email. And they swear to me that this year will be my last year if I requalify. They do have your records because they even told me that date I joined Frequence Plus and it is accurate. Honestly, I think we will know when the cards arrive.