The conditions state 'last seat availability', i.e. you get a seat as long as there is anything in Y available. I don't think the booking confirmation shows the fare class, feel free to check KL 1799 on Jan 19 and KL 1800 on Jan 21. I looks like though that I will get more miles than I got usually in the past on my ~100-120� bookings... "You will earn:1642 Award Miles 938 Level Miles"
By the way, forgot to mention, got a really nice e-mail recently:

So, one could buy a bundle now, become Gold, then actually travel after the new FB changes and target the Platinum? Interesting.

Yes, though it's not a particularly cheap way.

Well, its a 2-for-1 kind of deal. You get Gold now, and qualify for Gold/Plat using the segments that you purchased with the bundle. So if you don't have status it definitely is a good deal to start out, I would say.

So I wanted to share my experience on this as well.

I needed to book an ATH-AMS return flight which was pricing out close to 400 euro. Other carriers were close to 300 with sub-optimal times, so I decided to try the Flight Bundle. I combined two roundtrips (W,G and V,H class) into one roundtrip through the flightbundle (W,H class) and one through an OTA (G,V class).

The flight bundle is for 4 roundtrips, 2 people, one year validity, and at 186 euro per roundtrip. They charge 10 euro fee, plus 14 euro credit card fee - which you can avoid by paying through Paypal. It threw a fat "unexpected error" just after payment, but, it seems the payment went through anyway.

So in the end I booked one roundtrip (G,V class) cheaply through an OTA, and the other via the flight bundel. There was availability in W and H (WSRNL / HWKNL) but it actually booked into W9FP0NL9 and A9FP0NL9. Original cost for a W,A class roundtrip: 475 euro.

Besides the scary moment, just after payment, of the website crashing...it did work all OK for me so far. And with just one roudtrip I made back about half of the costs of the whole bundle. I'm planning to use the rest of the bundle for similar flights; over holidays and other peak times. Basically every time the regular fare (KLM or other airlines) goes above 186 euro, using the bundle will save me money.

After my initial - early - disappointing experience, I once again saw fares increasing to insane levels (I am looking at AMS-GVA around the February break) and even though I asked my wife to make some firm plans for our kids' training needs that would interfere with our trip dates, we were looking at AMS-GVA roundtrip of EUR 400 and above. Even U2 was close to that.

So I went ahead and purchased another bundle - my previous was cancelled and refunded given all technical issues I faced using it - and went on to book our flights.
A well known error message popped up (we are facing high traffic, please try again in 15 mins) and after some more trial and errors - and switching to Chromo (from OSX Safari) I managed to book all my flights at an average price of EUR 255 per round trip. Saving EUR 1.250 in total for our family compared to the 'loose' tickets, but also leaving me with another 5 round trips to be used before the end of August - at the same price.
So - my adjusted opinion is that the bundle now seems working and it offers a solution when fares are getting higher than usual. It could still work easier and there are quite a few improvements I could name, and I hope that the call centre would also be able to help out in the booking process now, which they were not in November.
So - use with care - but useful !

And extra benefit - mentioned before - in stead of the usual 375 miles (plus Elite bonus) now 2550 miles plus bonus...

That's good to hear. Could the issue that you were seeing be related to the browser? I have searched a couple of times and have not seen that specific error - however I do use Chrome as default (on Mac).

Regarding the mile earnings, that is true until the end of March. After that it is unclear how much we will earn, but most likely award miles based on the purchase price (of 255 euro for you). Status miles (XP's) will be awarded based on the distance (most likely 5XP per segment).

There's an offer now of a level upgrade in Flying Blue (for those currently at Explorer or Silver), or a miles bonus (10k if you're Gold, 15k if you're Platinum) if you buy a 20-flight bundle by April 30

https://www.klm.com/travel/nl_en/fly...ght_bundle.htm

Has anyone flown on one of these flights since April 1st? How are the award earnings calculated - based on the regular price of the underlying fare, a proportion of the bundle costs, or something else?

An update in case people are considering buying a bundle.

My (first) year bundle just finished, in the sense that I have booked all available flights/credits. I had purchased this bundle specifically for travel days where regular tickets are (very) expensive. Generally I book far ahead, but even then there are days that regular tickets will be expensive (eg due to holidays).

My bundle AMS-ATH (and vv) was 186 euro per roundtrip, to be used by 2 pax. One roundtrip I have already flown in July -> October, the rest is planned for April (Easter), June and July 2019.

In my case the savings have been quite incredible. Strictly looking at the retail price of the KLM flights I booked through the bundle, I saved between 200 and 400 euro per roundtrip. Of course, when looking at other carriers it may have been possible to find cheaper tickets, though in none of the cases the price of alternative flights was below the 186. And booking with KLM I have better timed flights, without having to transfer somewhere in between.

The highest savings is with the flight I booked today. Its for June/July and the regular price is 576 euro in Economy. Being able to book it for effectively 186 euro saved me almost 400 euro. In total I have received (estimate) about 1700 euro worth of KLM tickets for a price of 750 euro.

So that is the good. Now for the bad.

The milage earnings are based on the fare portion of the bundle (as expected). For the 186 euro roundtrips (93 euro one-way) that means a 66 euro base-fare. With FB Gold that means 467 miles per one-way. Flights credit the same irrelevant of direction. XP earnings are normal (5XP per segment).

Secondly the optiontown website is bad. Really bad at times. It has suffered from the "busy error" described in posts above, not allowing to book for days. So you should definitely keep that in mind when booking: There is a chance you won't be able to book the moment you would like to. Secondly I noticed one time that a flight/date was not bookable at all, while KLM was still selling tickets for that flight. I didn't need to travel that date, but keep in mind that you may have to contact them in such case to get your flight redemption. There does not seem to be some kind of generic blackout/blocking policy though, as I only noticed one specific day/flight to have this problem.

Third is that flights booked with the bundle will not be supported by KLM. They will refuse to help you with questions, rebookings or other service requests you may have. This will all have to go via Optiontown and their support seems to be mediocre (at best). I have no experience with IRROPS, my assumption is that KLM will step in in that case.

So I would advise to everyone who is considering a bundle to think about if it would fit you properly. Is your booking pattern in such way that you can actually take advantage of the bundle so that you come out positive. And if you decide to get a bundle that has a long advanced-booking requirement (eg 6 months) you better be very sure that you will be able to define your schedule that far ahead.

Personally though, overall, I am quite happy with the result. The financial savings have been substantial. It does have the downside of having to book far ahead (in my case), but as I use it mostly for flights around holidays I'm less likely to have to change these. You could get a bundle with a lower advance purchase requirement but the price will be higher, meaning there will be more occasions where a regularly purchased ticket will be cheaper.

One thing I noticed is that it is very difficult to put a value on these flights, if money was saved or not. When I redeem a flight there is a certain price difference between the advertised KLM price and my bundle price. However:

- There are maybe other flights that are cheaper, by other airlines
- Because the bundle allows to book until X days before departure, you don't book until that date. Without the bundle you may have booked earlier. In which case that ticket would have been probably cheaper.

So would the total price I paid for my flights this year, including the bundle, be much different than when I would not have had the bundle? Perhaps my booking pattern would have been different - and I may actually have been able to find cheap tickets on the days that I used the bundle. Its impossible to know: Your booking behaviour changes when you have access to a bundle that allows booking at a set price.

One potential loophole I just thought about is crediting these flights to another FFP. They seem to book in high fare classes (Although that is very difficult to verify nowadays), and those would credit at (almost?) full fare at other FFPs.

I spoke to a fellow pax today who had a AMS-CPH bundle (56 flights/year). He said that Optiontown's support was beyond terrible, and that he had given up even trying to deal with them. He figured that things went haywire maybe once or twice a year, and in such instances he simply bought a new ticket. Less hassle, and despite the extra expense the total savings were still very substantial.

Johan

I wanted to share one more experience with my flight bundle.

Unfortunately I had to move one of these flights forward by a few days and I feared the worst. The bundle these flights were booked with has now expired, and the terms for changing flights state that it has to be in accordance with your bundle rules - and my bundle required a 6 months advance purchase.

But to my surprise, a flight scheduled for a few weeks from now, was changeable for only the change fee of 70 euro. No fare difference whatsoever. I'm not sure if I was rebooked into the same fare bucket - probably yes as I was originally booked in an almost full-fare class.

So pleasantly surprised by this. Was able to change the flight without fuss, even though the new departure date is not 6 months out as the bundle normally requires.