Wish / suggestion : discount vouchers
 

I know that some flyertalkers here are having regular meetings with Flying Blue staff. Can you follow them up my wish / suggestion :

- Every ten (or 20, or whatever number) segments flown on an AF flight operated by AF, on an AF ticket number starting with 057 give a 10% (or 5% or whatever pourcent) discount voucher. AF MINI fares should be excluded.

- Vouchers are valid until the 31st dec of the year following its issuance.

- Multiple vouchers can be used (up to 50% discount for example) to buy
only AF tickets (one way, return, open-jaw) on any class, only on AF operated flights.

- Unused vouchers are not definitely lost.

The system you describe is very much miles. You fly and with every flight you get miles. So every x flights you get a free ticket. Why should they give a second time (and more flexibly)?

Oh and they even listened to you and excluded MiNi ;)

My wish is that they would reduce prices by 75%!

Sarcasm aside, an idea like this needs to be beneficial to both parties. What would be gained for AFKL to offer discount vouchers? Especially when offered to non-loyal customers who do not fly regularly.

In the end these vouchers will be sold at places like eBay, people will get these for cheap and combine them for half-off flights. Which basically means the airline loses half the revenue on these tickets. Thats a big financial hole to fill..

With my proposal, you have to purchase AF tickets on AF operated flights only, and the 11th ticket also on the AF bucket. Is not that generating revenue to AF ?

Of course, vouchers can used only used if the frequent flyer is on the PNR, this avoids having vouchers sold on ebay.

Currently, with Flying Blue, I can buy KE tickets and fly only on KE flights (and generate revenues to KE), credit the miles on my FB account, and reward an AF ticket (this will not generate revenue to AF, apart he fuel surcharges).

When you go to a shop and purchase 10 items, the shop
can offer you a discount on the 11th item , even on the cheapest article ? Is it so silly to ask for that ?

I think that you misunderstand the financials of FFPs.
Each time you fly on KE and credit to FB, KE has to pay FB for the miles (in a way they purchase those miles). Each time you get an award on AF, FB pays AF for the miles used for the award.
In your example AF gets revenues from your flight on KE.

Of course, an airline would prefer that you fly on them . Hence an airline FFP usually grants more miles for flights on their own airline than on partner airlines. BAEC is a good illustration where members get many more miles if flying on BA (or AA/IB) than flying on other OW partner. Your voucher idea goes in the same direction but differential earning rates is much simpler to implement. FB has not been very proactive in giving more miles to AFKL flights but has done it somewhat.

Fantastic idea! I can't believe Air France didn't think of this themselves!

However, may I slightly refine your proposal to make it even more beneficial to all?

I don't understand what you mean by:
Why did you put a use-by date on them, if unused vouchers "are definitely not lost"?

That said, reverting to your less-generous proposal, picking up 5 ultra-cheap domestic flights (non-Mini!!) in France, and paying only a few hundred Euro max for these, would be a fantastic way to earn a 50% discount voucher to be later used on a paid Business Class or La Première ticket to a long haul destination, saving many thousands of Euros in the process...

My idea is, and brunos perfectly understood it, that AF is not rewarding enough flyers who fly exclusively with AFKL (This could be the message to send to FB) , and the discount voucher could a way to do that.

Now I am not a financial, nor a mathematician. Maybe for the AFKL point of view, you will have to fly 100 times to get 10%, I just put the % and number as examples, they can be changed.

But I have the feeling that my post is stupid. So if it is the case, may I ask the moderators to delete it.

Personally, I am not sure I would want to encourage AF/FB to restrict (or incentivise) me to fly exclusively with AFKL. Firstly, remember that FB is also the home FFP for KQ, RO, UX and SB - not just AFKL. And one of the key reasons for alliances (at least from the passenger perspective) is that it enables you to be loyal to an alliance (with much better global coverage) not simply a single airline.

Looking at my own flying pattern this year, I have flown more segments on FB member airlines (ie: AF/KL/KQ/RO) than on any other single airline (or group). However, I have also flown a significant number of segments on various other (SkyTeam) airlines. So, FB is my logical 'home FFP' - but it is important for me to get similar benefits when travelling with other airlines (and without such benefits, I would have no reason to remain loyal to SkyTeam, when flying AF/KL (or KQ/RO/UX/SB) is not possible for some reason).

And remember that, in the Skyteam transatlantic Joint Venture, each of Air France, KLM, Delta and Alitalia share all revenues on all flights operated in the joint venture.

So Air France gets its "share" of the spoils of all such traffic, even from those passengers that never once set foot on its own planes.

Agreed. Look how Delta is trying to "incentivise" its flyers to commit to Delta - or at least to buying tickets from Delta - they are introducing a minimum spending requirement in order to reach status.

The fact remains that, as long as Air France operates a frequent flyer programme, then this will be the only "programme" intended to reward loyalty. They will NOT introduce any other scheme in addition to the FFP. And even if they did, it would not take the form proposed here - it would undoubtedly be modelled on Delta's changes!

(By the way, Flying Blue is a completely different entity to, and is administered separately from, Air France - if you were to make this suggestion to anyone, it should be to Air France directly, not to Flying Blue. Flying Blue cannot and will not be able to implement/introduce schemes specific to Air France, as it has neither the authority nor the ability to make such changes)

Scripta manent ;)