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.

I'll take your word for it, but I did not have to. I think I got LTPE after 7 or 8 years (can't remember), but maybe I'm the exception that proves the rule.

Johan

Was there not a lifetime status in Flying Dutchman? I'd have expected you to have been a lifer before FB was even conjured into life.

Strange, as Platinum exist since june 2005.
Strange, as you should be FP/FD red since 2004, as you state
Strange, as you read on your account that "you need 0 more year (s) to qualify for LTPE"
Strange, because I have the same words on my account "you need 0 more year (s) to qualify for LTPE" but Platinum since 2005 + 2 years as FP red since nov 2003.
So, as stated in previous threads, I will be LTPE in 2014 with a new card on april 2014, with no needing to fly in 2013.

many threads are about this:
the first: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/flyin...lite-life.html

I can confirm that this is indeed correct. Otherwise I would have already turned LTPE several years ago instead of this year. BTW, no change in anything since my status has become lifelong.

Does your account statement still mention the status miles and flights even though these are not needed anymore?

It still counts the level miles and qualifying flights, but under status it shows "Platinum for Life, date of first qualifying for Platinum"

:D Yeah, from late '63.

No, FD did not have lifetime status, but all points above the RoyalWing renewal threshold carried over into following years. I had quite a store by the time FD was discontinued, and therefore qualified for LTPE almost the minute it was introduced.

Johan

Thanks!

As stated before, years under FP/FD are also taken into account. I came into FB under FD, so my FD Platinum Elite years were also taken into account.

Gajan

Gajan, how does this fit together? You write you have already qualified 10 times, you write your account shows "Plat for life", and yet you write above that FB told you you have to qualify one more time to get Plat for Life???

Sorry for the confusion. I am currently in my last year to qualify as LTPE; my mother has qualified last year (and her account currently shows the status LTPE - and have taken the information as stated earlier from her account).

written on my account, as Frequence Plus red since nov 2003, FB gold since 2005 april 1st and FB platinum since 30/11/2005

"Membership level Platinum . Since 30-11-2005
If you stay 0 years more Platinum, you will become Platinum for Life."

So no needing to fly ST during 2013 (even if I fly nevertheless :) )

You only need to qualify for platinum for another year so this is your last year before reaching platinum for life. If you qualify again this year, next year on April 1st your account will show "you need 0 more years to qualify for LTPE". In 2014 you will be a virtual plat for life and you will recive you official plat for life confirmation early 2015 whatever flying paterned you had in 2014.
I justed recived my plat for life card this year, last year I had this 0 year message in my status and I did not technically qualified for plat.

SO just make sure to qualify this year and you will be good

as per my previous post I confirm base on my own experience that what ever you would be doing this year you will be plat for life next year. Your are currently what I call a virtual plat for life

Yes, that is right: when you see "0 year..." you are a virtual Platinum for life with the real card the year after. Thanks Pauillac for clarification.

So then in my case, I don't have to fly 60 segments next year, right? And then, Gajan really does not need to requalify this year.

And yes, thanks Pauillac for the explanation.

yes just make really sure to reach 60 segments this year if you qualify by segments

I read all the threads related to that topic some years ago when I was approaching that 10 year threshold. I was profoundly confused, just in the same way that this thread has now reached its 3rd page and still noone knows for sure.

So I just went on qualifying myself and then sometime around March the status of my account showed "Platinum for life". I did not understand the maths back then and I still don't understand them now. And since I do not remember which year I became Plat for Life I cannot reconstruct them either.

My advice is to just go on and requalify this year, which you need to do anyway. You then have to make a call in January: either you take a risk and assume that you have turned Plat for Life and stop flying any qualifying flights - but the risk is that you'll only find out three months later whether your assumption was correct; or you play it safe and just continue flying qualifying flights, and when in March you find out whether or not you are Plat for Life you can then still decide whether you want to do more qualifying flights because you'd do them anyway or say "I got the status locked in, I can now move to another FFP". So your only grey zone is January-March 2014. If you fly on AFKL and Skyteam airlines anyway during that period then the question is irrelevant anyway.

The topic has been extensively discussed on this board. I have made a complete post in the past but cannot find it anymore. A summary can nevertheless be found here : http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/16092522-post20.html

Edited : I found it :
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/flyin...w-rules-3.html

I can confirm the FP Rouge deal that if you were Rouge before 2005, it really won't show your correct start date. Mine says...

Platinum Depuis 04-06-2005
Si vous conservez votre statut Platinum 1 année(s), vous deviendrez Platinum à vie.

I've already requal'd this year so I'm pretty sure I'm done. But like San Gottardo says, it's really confusing and I won't count on it being done til I get notification. Which will hopefully happen next April.

Wow, it seems that by next year the majority of the regular posters here will be Platinum for Life. Will that mean that our forum will wind down to only a few posts? ;)

Don't worry too much. Those of us who have still quite a few years to go to reach LTPE, will keep complaining about everything :D

Number qualified LTPE in 2012
 

My mother received an invitation for a special day for those who qualified for LTPE in 2012 for an event in June.

According to the invite, roughly 200 people in the Netherlands qualified for LTPE last year.

Just a bit speculation:

Based on mere population size, the number of new Plat for life people per year in France could then be 700, so let's say altogether 1000 Plat for life in the Netherlands and France per year.
If say half of Plats for life are from other countries, this would give a total of 2000 Plats for life per year. With FB being roughly 10 years old and assuming iid random variables, there are about 20000 Plats for life. As FB has 16000000 members, that's about .1% of all FB members.
Plats for life travel more often than the average FB customers, but not neccessarily much more than the other Elite plus customers without life membership.
This means that one Plat for life per plane on average is probably a realistic order of magnitude.

If you have addtional data points or more plausible lines of analysis, feel free to update this calculation.

I don't know any better but just to stress-test your assumptions: actually I think that more LTPEs are added these days than 10 years ago, that simply is the dynamic of the market. Frequent flyers actually fly more today than 10 years ago, the "base population" of FB members is bigger, plus there are more earning opportunities to reach status. On the other hand there were some "grandfathered" lifetime Plats coming over from the KLM programme which had this lifetime feature already before Flying Dutchman.

But what really struck me is the high number. Let's assume for a second that 20'000 is correct. That is *A LOT!!!* And it explains why there isn't any special recognition or service. I remember how the Miles & More management freaked out when they suddenly had around 5,000 members because there were too many to provide all the services to. So they cut down on some of the services (subtly, but they did), and most of all they made access stricter by limiting HON earning to Business and First Class fares. Their hope is to bring it down to 2,500 members. Emirates Platinum which was just launched has 5,500 members, on basically similar earning criteria like HON, i.e. 3 times the yearly earning of Gold/SEN - but hardly feels as exclusive as HON does (or maybe that is because after so many years of HON I am more hard to impress).

So with 20,000 people out there who all think they are something special *plus* all the non-lifetime Platinums it is obvious that nothing miraculous will happen to them in terms of service.

Is it a lot? Relative to what? There are millions of FB members in total, right? And millions more who fly without joining a program.

And in comparison I'll bet there are now close to a million United 1MM'ers (Lifetime Gold) and a goodly number of 2MM'ers (Lifetime Platinum). A whole lot more than FB LTPE's.