dg4255

I know this has been hashed to death on here, but I just wanted to voice my disgust at these stupid fees for AF/KL tickets when using FB. I needed to use some points to fly VCE-CDG. Total using FB miles was €216.85 (about $336) for 2 tickets. Using CO miles instead for the same flights was only $162.00 and $50 of that was the ticketing fee. So, same amount of miles used, but half the cash cost. Just ridiculous. Grrrrrrrrrr...

Dambus

Agree the fees are outrageous..... "Free tickets"

I assume the difference is fuel surcharges, wonder if AF bills CO (and CO are just forgetting to pass on the charge)?

alanw

Honestly. I have to wonder why anyone would waste points on redeeming awards for short-haul European flights. It makes no sense.

You can fly nonstop VCE-CDG for 56€. For 25€ more, you can upgrade to business class on Vueling. That's a round-trip flight in business for about the same price as the taxes on your FB award.

ranskis

for some one-way connecting flights, that makes sense. I used 12500 for HEL CDG TRN that would have costed at least 500 EUR at least on a paid ticket.

asnovici

Just got off the phone with FB. Wanted to redeem 12500 miles for one-way FRA-SVO (FRA-AMS-SVO actually). They wanted 12500 miles and.... <drumbeat>.... $214 as taxes and fees! Ended up paying $275 for an actual revenue ticket on SAS instead, including all the taxes and fees, no miles needed. FB is ridiculous.

NickB

It sometimes makes sense when you book at the last minute and the paid fares are sky-high.

JOUY31

I've been guilty of doing it, sometimes ...

Gajan

Or for getting a cheap flexible ticket (€40 change fee)

dg4255

First, there is no business class on Vueling. I do not consider an XL seat as "business classs" and neither does the airline. No lounge, no free food, no free liquor, no nothing. That's hardly "business class".

Second, the price for my dates of travel on Vueling is €200.92 per ticket and as there is only 1 flight a day between VCE and CDG, I don't have many options with Vueling. The price for the same AF flights is €452.40 per ticket. This is a last minute personal trip, not business, so price is a bigger factor.

Third, as a FT monitor, I think we should expect more intelligent and less accusatory posts from you. To say that it "makes no sense" and then to follow it up with comments about business class and the cost of tickets which has nothing to do with my original post is going too far in my opinion. I was merely commenting on the comparison in cost between awards using FB and CO OnePass miles. If you care to chime in on that subject, please feel free to do so. I am a well-educated, very well-travelled person and I know the airline game very, very, very well. Afterall, I've been a professional travel consultant for 17 years. I'm pretty sure I know what I am doing.

Mofomat

But it's all about opportunity cost. SO you could have paid an extra 91 Euros per person and saved 25,000 miles (presuming it's a one way VCE-CDG).

50,000 miles is enough to get you to LA or Mexico City in AF First Class.

Alanw is correct when he says redeeming for free flights in Europe is a complete waste. Period.

You'd think so.....

holtju2

There is rarely any sense for redeeming for Y when airlines charge these fuel surcharges on award tickets.

Alternate option is to try using miles from a program that doesn't charge these. FYI I just redeemed yesterday CAI-BAH-KTM-BAH-AMM-DAM in GF/RJ C and the taxes/fees were $44.20. On the other hand I have been hit with these fuel surcharges on award tickets issued by BD.

dg4255

Good grief, Mofomat, I have more than 400,000 miles in my FB account right now. I never use them for upgrading as my paid travel is almost exclusively in C or F class anyway. The number of times I have been in long-haul paid C or J and attempted to use to upgrade to A class has been many with every single attempt failed. I have no other use for them really. If I can't use them to upgrade on long-hauls from C to F, then for business purposes they are useless to me.
I am taking a friend to Paris for Bastille Day (an annual trip for me, first time for my friend) and didn't want to shell out over €900 when I could do it for about €100 using CO OnePass miles. So, €800 in savings. Hmmmm, that's one helluva dinner! or two, or three... And, since switching over from CO to FB (moved to Europe, etc etc etc), I have been buying flowers on the CO OnePass Shopping Mall just to keep the miles from disappearing. With over 331,000 miles in that account, I will not miss 37,500 miles per person. In fact, on the outbound, to fly in C was 5000 miles less than to fly in Y. I do not understand your math here, Mofomat. A paid roundtrip on AF for the times I need is €452 per person. To use FB miles to redeem for two people would have been €216.85 total. So, €904 for two paid tickets. How do you get €91 difference?
Additionally, I have flown over 175,000 status miles just since Jan 1, 2008 alone. I am Platinum through March 2010. I have more than 60,000 Platinum extended miles to apply towards status earning in 2009. I do not need another 1500 status miles (750 each direction).
Again, as I posted before in response to alanw's reply, this is not about why I used the miles. Frankly, it' no one's business why I chose to use miles instead of buy the tickets. I was simply commenting on how absurd the difference in fees was between FB and CO OnePass.

NickB

This strikes me as an accountant's point of view that simply does not take into account the actual needs and desires of the person concerned.

If you look at it merely from the perspective of the value "on the books", then your conclusion is unavoidable. However, you need to factor in individual situations. In theory, I could keep miles for another long-haul C or F flight. But what if I am already compeltely booked out and will accrue miles fast enough to earn another 50K by the next time I need one? What if I am point rich and cash poor. Would it not make sense in that situation to use my points for intra-European awards? There is only so many times that I might want to go to LAX or MEX.

Personally, I barely ever use my FB points for long-haul (except very occasionally for web awards). If I want a long-haul C or F redemption, I will usually use my BD miles, which I accrue considerably faster and where the redemption rates are much better than with FB. My main use of FB miles is precisely for last minute intra-European where I would otherwise have to pay through the nose for a flight.

Now, wearing accountant's glasses (and especially if one unrealistically values C and F award travel at paid fare levels), you might say that I should really be saving those miles for long-haul travel to maximise value. But what would be the point when I have more BD miles than I need and I would simply be building up a mountain of unused FB miles?

Mofomat

I was taking into account the price of the Vueling flights you quoted.

Well done on the number of miles you have collected. I am in complete awe, and I'm sure most FTers are on here.

BUT, the number of miles you have doesn't take away from the fact that intra-European awards are extremely poor value compared with longhaul rewards. End of discussion.

JOUY31

I believe this thread has now run its course. I would like to remind posters that here is not the place for comments on people, but for facts and ideas. Thank you.

Jouy31
AF/KL co-moderator