strikerbird

Dear all,
I found this video on YouTube, where the Northern Europe divison of Air France/KLM gave a webinar. There were some interesting changes made, and also mentioning of improving the platinum status.


Sinerely,
SB

Xandrios

I think most items have been reported here previously. However the main takeaways for me are:

- Exit row & Comfort seating will change for Gold (Free from 3 days before departure), and Silver (free from 24h before departure).
- Free stopover on pure afkl awards. Should be live now though I haven’t seen the option yet.
- Some minor Ultimate improvements regarding check in and passport controls (CDG only). Possibly additional improvements for Ams to follow.
- Platinum benefits will be improved within a year.
- XP earning on donations and SAF as we know


Personally I’m not too happy about the changes for comfort seating, as this means that every single flight will likely always go out with all Comfort seats occupied. Gone will be the days of having the middle seat empty on the first few rows of economy.

HalconBCN

Agreed. On MH flights the first 2-3 rows behind business are already often chock full, it's annoying when you are squashed together with other elites and then you go to the bathroom later on in the flight and find backpackers further down the plane enjoying a full row to themselves.
The seating system should do everything possible to make sure no platinum is forced to sit on a row with 2 pax unless the plane is fully booked. Whether that's through alerts on the app ("hey, would this seat be more comfortable for you today") or the purser or ground agents being more proactive.

drminn

The C+ seating may have something to do with Delta trying to force uniform benefits across Skyteam FF programs. There has been plenty of discussion in the Delta forum about being "upgraded" to a middle seat in C+ when half the plane behind you was empty. If I remember correctly the solution was to introduce an upgrade preference to no be upgraded into a middle seat.

Xandrios

Yes, it was mentioned that this new model is similar to Delta's - so you may be right on that.

The problem is two fold though. Yes it sucks to be upgraded from an empty regular row, into a middle seat in C+. But also for the pax already in C+ (paid or plat) this is a downgrade as they will now no longer have that middle seat empty - which (at least for me personally) is much more important than an extra inch of legroom.

And a 3rd issue that was brought up in the presentation is that if you will have to extend a trip by a few days (Which is quite common when traveling for business) that you won't be able to find Comfort seating. That is already a huge problem when flying long haul these days (Less so when flying short haul), but when its a free for all from 3 days before departure it will be absolutely impossible to extend your trip and be rebooked into comfort. You'll find silver members enjoying comfort for free, while a Plat member rebooking (probably into an extensive fare bucket) will have to do with 23B.

CyBeR

As I mentioned in the earlier thread about this unless the discount when purchased ahead of 72/24 hour mark for FB/DL elites remains, this is clearly a clever scheme to extract more revenue from non-platinum customers who now find themselves almost being required to purchase an EC seat ahead of time at the higher (full) price, or find them already taken.

r0gerthat

Thanks for highlighting all this.

Is there anything mentioned about what the Platinum improvements will be or is there some sort of rumour going around?

ElPaso90

As a Gold member, am I the only one who thinks this is not as bad as it sounds?

What I am saying is: does C+ cabin usually get filled earlier than 3 days before departure? In my opinion this is a win-win situation: if there is no free C+ seat 3 days before departure I still get my regular seat while if there is still one available I get it for free.

Fabo.sk

I am interested to see whether the discount for advance purchase stays or is gone.

either way, I don't see it as doom and gloom as others, though I do thing EC cabins will fill up a bit more. After all, what this amounts to is a free EC seat at OLCI time for any status holder.
Still it's quite common to have free middles in front section of Air France, so I don't know that it's out of the question for KLM either.

Would be nice if middle seat blocking for Gold/Plat was honored as well.

fifty_two

thanks for sharing , gosh i feel like i am watching a webinar or townhall at work , after few seconds i just listen while doing other tasks

etiene

All our recent flights have been basically full, meaning the Plats in C+ don't get a seat block but the Gold/Silvers don't get C+ either - it's just full of Ivories. Not managed to check-in late enough to get one by default either, so this new regime will be an improvement for us... Any word on when it will be implemented?

f0zzyNUE

I hope that the changes will stay on the positive side - usually good news are coupled with bad news in that environment

stopovers on pure AF/KL flights basically mean free stopover in CDG or AMS. there are not many other options - but stiil an interesting change.

curiousexplorer

True, I wouldn't be too shocked if they increase the XP thresholds for all Elite status levels. It would be more surprising if they simply add benefits without increasing the "cost".

Xandrios

Increasing XP requirements is something that was explicitly denied during the presentation. It could always happen further down the line, but that doesn't seem to be something that will happen soon.

Digicola

I’m rather surprised they didn’t decrease the requirements instead of doubling XP. The problem with these rollover systems is flyingblue will probably have a lot of elites on their hands for the years to come.

Advantage of course is that many of them will probably stick to AF/KL for a couple of years. Thats the theory at least.

The alternative is that they were preparing themselves knowing they would change requirements in years to come. I still believe changes are amiss, might not be so in the short term but if elite numbers don’t normalise within the next couple of years expect… « enhancements ». For our own benefit of course, or so they will say.