New Classic Awards
 

According to flying blue:

For your convenience, you will still be able to book an award flight under the current conditions if you wish until the end of 2013 using current Miles and previous carrier imposed international surcharge amounts. However, that will only be possible by contacting our Flying Blue Service Centre.

So I call Flying Blue last week to book an award ticket using the "current conditions". The agent did not know about this rule (why was I not surprised).

I called yesterday to book another Classic Award ticket which showed as available online as a Classic Award ticket for 120K miles from HKG to CDG. The agent's system showed no Classic Award ticket available for the same flight.

I had to email her a screen copy of their web site. She later called me back to tell me that "I can only book a Classic Award flight under the current conditions, provided that it is available for the smaller number of miles (100,000)).

Knowing that these agents are poorly trained, I'm wondering whether anyone else has experienced this?

Yes - see posts 414 and 422 in the relevant thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/flyin...awards-28.html

Thanks. In these two posts, the member was quoted the smallest number of miles for a Classic Award ticket online. I'm only offered a Classic Award ticket for 20K more miles than the smallest possible for the HKG->CDG route.