gerardfarrell

I just tried to make an award booking for next December, Manchester UK to Lima, Peru and have been told that the first available outbound reward is on Jan 3rd and return is on 1st Feb. Do FB really expect me to believe that all of their reward seats have been booked 6-7 months in advance!?

The girl just kept saying someone else must have booked all the seats already, but was unable to say exactly how many seats had been made available for reward tickets. But if I spend twice as many miles (140K instead of 70K) then there may be something available in December after all.

As I used to be able to book rewards on this route via FD much sooner to the flight date I suspect that the new KLM/Air France policy is to release almost no seats to reward tickets to force people to use all of their miles up by paying double.

Has anyone had better luck getting award flights?

Gerry

Threy

My brother was not able to get a single seat on LH to EZE in Y or C from DEC. 10 to Jan X and he called LH in march....

If airlines know that the flights will be booked they would be stupid to release award seats...

That was always the sense of the game as I understood it, however I am sure that on short notice seat will become available again...

As pointed out in various other thread, the relation between supply and demand has shifted dramatically during the last years of mergers, alliances, credit card miles, so getting awards on long haul flights will become next to impossible in the upcoming years...

Emma65

Last week I was looking at flying BRS-YYZ. Yup, on open miles I could. No way I'm falling for that trick. 10 hrs before departure all of a sudden there was a seat available for 50k miles.

I wonder.....

Horizons

Is it possible to then book the lower-miles ticket and redeposit the miles for the earlier ticket? (Just about every airline lets you do this -- United even encourages it as a reasonable strategy, albeit for a redeposit fee.)

I am sort of steamed that there is not one seat available for my simple itinerary in late September -- or a week around it, either! -- except for the Open Miles option. It's pretty clear to me that either the inventory of seats is being mis-managed or is being managed nefariously (by that I mean bait-and-switch... putting out an award chart that few have any reasonable chance of using).

graraps

to the OP: Have you tried checking for flights on AM? It seems to me that most of the MEX-LIM flts in Dec have plenty of space. All of the booking classes are wide open apart from B,V,D and A which are zeroed out. A and B are normal published fare classes that you can purchase, so there will be award availability unless award codes are V for eco and D for biz.
You shouldn't have any problems reaching MEX, either, as every Skyteam carrier apart from KE has flights there (AFAIK OK codeshares on AM flights from CDG, but you shouldn't have a problem bagging an OK-coded seat if the AM ones are not open).
I can also see seats on DL ATL-LIM if you don't mind going through the hassle of US immigration.

ocdb8r

Don't forget that AM balckout dates include Dec 15-31.

Klm is Dead - Long Live KLM

Just before Flying Dutchman was converted to Flying Blue, I had checked several planned trips from AMS to the states with connections on NWA - one for this Fall and another for January 2006. With small changes to my planned dates, availability was no problem. Now with Flying Blue there are absolutely NO flights possible, none. Not even an offer to allow myself to be being robbed by paying twice the number of miles to sit on a half-empty aeroplane.

TRESY

I am an FD Gold and was trying to get 4 biz awards for Man-JNB in October with KLM/Skyteam, before Flying Blue. I had plenty of miles, but never had enough seats on offer (or any).

After Flying Blue, like others, all that was coming up was AF using the "Guaranteed" award seat at double miles - 220,000 for Eco.!!

However, just after midnight last night (Sunday) I tried again and to my surprise 4 seats at regular redemption levels came up. Booked it quick, and paid the exorbitant taxes fees etc of almost 900 Euro for 4 seats.

At no time though did a KLM flight show up.

whizzer

After what I read here, I was pretty nervous when I tried to book two award tickets in business class from CDG to MIA in Feb / March 2006. But the first set of dates I tried worked, so I'm now a happy customer...

GUWonder

If that comes to pass, then won't frequent flyer programs go the way of the black and white TVs? And if long-haul award redemptions are not desirable, who needs frequent flyer programs given cheap flying buses (aka LCCs) for short-hauls?

graraps

I'll be sticking to FFPs as long as there are meaningful status benefits (i.e. lounge access and, to a lesser extent, premium check-in and the possibility of priority baggage) that I can achieve without putting in excessive amounts of money or effort (in my case as a predominantly short-haul traveller, that means segment-based qualification). I imagine other people are in a similar position.
Some of the LCCs in Europe (FR in particular) are just not an option if you want to remain sane, and a transcon flight on a cramped plane only catered with crisps and coke (like Easyjet LTN-ATH, never mind the fact they're quite pricey both in terms of fares and catering) isn't particularly pleasant, either.

GUWonder

I am hoping BMI is not leading the way away from status benefits across alliances.

Steve Fenton

1) Lounge access - yeah thats just getting better and better these days. In AMS it is more relaxing to go in the public areas than a KLM lounge
2) Premium check in , yes I recall that once but it seems a hazy image in the distant past, evrytime I check in its a free for all.
3)Priority baggage - //////////----------/////////// nope cant recall that one either

short haul on KLM is just way too expensive, service is too hit and miss and dont quote me the options of what happens when there is a delay or cancellation as they are as bad if not worse than EZ and FR.

At least with R and EZ you get clean planes, same legroom, usually arrive early and you save money.

The best for me intra Europe LCC is Air Berlin who actually have a very simple to operate FF programme as well.

graraps

Well, there's more to FSCs than KL. The majority of my flights are with OK and AZ, and in general I'm very satisfied. AF also tend to offer higher quality service than KL.
AB does sound very nice to me, but I don't go to Germany that often and whenever I 've thought about trying them with a connection, their pricing was higher than AZ.

Roger

Apart from their network of German routes, they offer a couple of useful non-German nonstop routes out of STN - to VIE (operated by partner Air Niki) and PMI, where they are apparently the largest operator. Connections via German airports are also available, and as you point out are less competitive.

I understand meals and drinks are included and seat numbers are allocated at checkin, or in advance for €8 - I'll find out shortly on our trip to VIE.