orbitmic

and of course, you ‘pay’ 3500 but the fare is 2500 and that’s what your accrual will be based on (not the taxes and charges) so you are now down to 27000 miles.

the system is aimed at individuals and smes sponsoring large companies which get rebate based on their spend at the end of the year (so nominal ticket value is 5000 but in practice they may pay 2000, still getting credit for 5000). See post by Raffles in the BA forum thread on the FB change.

Ditto

That is mostly assumptions at this point, especially whether or not the YR surcharge will be included in mileage accrual or not...

irishguy28

I think the dangerous assumption to make is that YR, or any tax, fee, or charge would earn miles.

do you really think that if you pay €10 for an economy comfort seat you will get an extra 40/60/70/80 miles? (Well, that would be unfair because the Platinums wouldn't be allowed to pay for a seat, so lose out on that potential 80 extra miles!!! )

Or that if you buy direct from KLM, rather than via a third party, you will get an extra 40/60/70/80 miles for the privilege of having paid the KLM €10 booking fee???

After all, within any particular cabin, the taxes, fees, charges and YR *should* be the same - and the mileage differs only on the fare basis [which in the new scheme morphs to the base fare paid].

CosmicGirl

True, however Skymiles does include carrier-imposed charges. With all the AFKL/DL/VS ownership stuff going on, it would make sense to streamline things as much as possible. That said, making sense is probably not the goal here.

bodory

Whatever they decide, be sure we will be screwed.

Sjondorn

Oh I see, so folks that are in US are infact expats from France or Netherlands.

tigertanaka

The key thing for me is the ability to gain status by segments.

As for mileage earning based on my 2017 travel with KL (all intra-EU):

• 43 segments (so comfortably gold)
• earned 20,150 level miles (so nowhere near silver)
• at a cost of £6,046 (inc taxes & fees)

Let's say the exchange rate has averaged €1.15 to the £ so far this year, 4 miles per € would give me 27,813 miles (assuming the mileage is paid including taxes & fees).

So maybe I will do better out of the changes mainly because I fly from a small airport in the UK with no other hub airport than AMS and therefore KL charge a big price premium over some of their other, larger regional airports. If I was a KL commuter from MAN or EDI, I believe I would be well worse off with 4 miles per € due the flights being a lot more competitively priced.

San Gottardo

If status is all one cares about, finding another ST program could be the solution (and some of us could just status-match). Or are there any instances where having an FB status has an advantage over having Elite status from another ST carrier? All I can think of is the link to Amex.

Regarding earnings, there is a possibility that they'll keep a system where one earns a minimum amount of miles for European trips. In which case the mile/EUR spent becomes less relevant for those collecting on Euro trips.

So true.

But then, they'd mess up communication anyway (obvious marketing bla-bla such as "enhancement" when actually it is "less than before"; contradictions within communiqués; contradictions between various language versions; various channels saying different things because they don't get updated; outright lies). So if on top of that they also mess up the timing of the messed-up communication, does it matter?


Another interesting question: will they stop "Platinum for life" under the pretext that it has been earned under old rules?

Moving to BA? That's quite drastic.

irishguy28

You will have a hard time finding any ST partner status matching at the moment - and if you were planning on matching from Flying Blue, forget it!!!

I think you misread that. The OP said they had been putting more flying towards BA recently, but were now considering switching back to ST in order to get the missing 17 segments to hit FB Platinum!

Zembla

Yes, they are always good at adding insult to injury. They have insulted our intelligence before. "This is what our clients asked for", "Survey results have revealed that", blahblah...

That would certainly demotivate a lot of existing Platinum for Life holders to fly with KL/AF. Notably, the ones who have a choice: if suddenly you loose the Platinum privileges you've had for 10+ years, why still bother to choose AF/KL?

San Gottardo

http://loyaltylobby.com/2017/07/19/u...february-2019/I sometimes read the « newsletter » that our corporate travel agency sends out and in there I have seen status match offers by American Airlines, British Airways, Delta and Etihad. Each « fly once with us and get your status matched ». This just goes to say that there are ST airlines out there that offer status matches.

Also, again I haven’t researched it, but who knows what Aerlineas Argentinas, China Southern or Aeromexico are offering somewhere out there.

Not all status match offers are available to everybody, and many of them are targeting specific markets (the offers I mentioned were in a market where the « home » carrier is a member of Star Alliance), and some people get them by asking directly.

But they do exist.

A number of people that have status on FB also have status on another non-ST airline. Just on this forum I know there are BA Gold card holders; M&M Senators and I think also UA status holders. Matching from FB to another ST program, that indeed I agree will be virtually impossible.

Indeed I misread that.

ÉDIT: searched « status match Skyteam 2017 » and quite a number of relevant links came up. Including one by China Southern that also offered to match other ST programs, but customers apparently then had a « Made in China » experience where the airline suddenly claimed that the campaign actually didn’t exist (could have been withdrawn under pressure from DL).

irishguy28

I've been looking all year for a ST status match.

Aerolineas and Air Europe are not currently doing so; the web had news of a China Southern status match during the summer but it was intended only for targeted North-American based applicants and my application was rejected; in the meantime I clawed my way back to status the hard way with Alitalia, though I don't expect they will still be a Skyteam member next year....

Though hopefully when that happens, there will be status match offers galore for Millemiglia refugees....
Yes, I'm one of them, I have status in all 3 alliances. Currently earned "the hard way", and entirely out of my pocket. This year is unusual - I am usually able to get/maintain status in at least one of the alliances by judicious status-matching - or failing that via "error fares". I'm hoping that Skyteam can be my "matched" one next year - come on Alitalia!

toastedcafe

Not good news.. Im also one of the persons who has status on all alliances. I usually manage to keep my status on FB by doing a small number (4-6) of long-haul flights in J at an OK price. However, I could also choose to fly other airlines (i.e.QR & TK), which have good J products, for less amount of money. Therefore, if the changes require me to pay for a more expensive booking class just in order to maintain my status, I will forget about FB (and ST) and focus SA and OW.

tigertanaka

As @irishguy28 says, I was thinking of putting more business KLM's way in the rest of 2017 in order to secure platinum on FB for next year and gold for 2019. This is more about retaining status rather than an endorsement of FB - I see little benefit of Platinum over Gold apart from the soft landing to Gold if I dont fly much next year.

But is BA such a bad option compared to KL? I earn more miles per £ spent with BA, have more opportunities to earn miles with BA partners (OK I am a UK resident), I can get a BA Amex 2-4-1 voucher every year with my Amex, plus BA have a more structured tier progression and a more transparent redemption options. Taxes can be a bit higher on BA (but KL are not exactly low!).

As far as the flight experience goes they are pretty much similar IMO although AMS is not as congested as LHR and does have a far better transfer experience for Schengen>UK trips.

Ditto

If BA works for you then by all means you should continue flying with them, personally I only had several short-haul/domestic flights with them (this was before BOB, but that's not a big game changer for me) and they were just fine.
I had a friend who used to fly BA for over 15 years, mostly for work and all long-haul in J/F, she tried KL for the first time last year and since then switched all her personal long-haul flights to KL, sure you can do ex-EU but why bother if you can fly to AMS and get a cheap KL fare from there?