nldogbert

Hi,

Just noticed that KLM introduced what they call "Flight Bundle". Basically the carnet system like Air France for domestic but this is for Inter European flights.
This ticket looks to be a collaboration with OptionTown.

There are 3 fare categories, Light, Standard and Flex.

Price wise, to me it does not look very much more discounted than what you can get already in current booking if you're looking ad >30 days advance booking.

Anyway, more info at https://flightbundle.klm.com/nl?WP.s...r_FLIGHTBUNDLE

https://klmflightbundle.klm.com/

Cheers!

Meneer Guggenheimer

I fly to Norwich at least once a week if I am in the Netherlands and spend a whole day yesterday figuring it out and decided that in the end it is not worth it as the savings are not to great in the end for the flexibility your not getting with it.

Fabo.sk

No good for me.

6 flights in 3 months, weekend stay, booking month out, still quoted me 79 per one way, when I can commonly get return for 99+booking

AlicorporateUK

I got my TravelPass with Alitalia (same provider i.e. Optiontown, route Warsaw-Rome-Warsaw, 2 flights a week) and was quite happy with it, especially during peak times (summer) when prices tend to increase significantly. The website could probably do with some investment (I had to call on a number of occasions in order to confirm my seat) but, again, happy overall.

G

pjhartog

I looked at the bundles too and my initial feeling was also that the savings are very limited.

I think the main advantage is that if you have a bundle and there are seats in the cabin you want - not depending on booking class - you can get the seat(s).

So if you can always roundtrips at decent prices and never run into limited availability but only higher priced classes, then it makes no sense.

We run often into specific issues - Friday night and Sun night flights - that are quite expensive because they are booked out in the lower priced classes. Then it might make sense to have the bundle.

For now, I will continue my gamble as always - if I run into a specific issue I can always switch to the bundle.

Just my view

Xandrios

Interesting concept. I am one of those people that do fly almost weekly within Europe on a set route (AMS-ATH). Currently I avoid high fares by booking early and making sure to check multiple alliances (having status in *A also). I'd have to calculate how much I have spent the last year, but I'm estimating on overall it is slightly below the KLM flight bundle (having selected the 90 day advance purchase).

However... the option to book close to departure date may be a valueable one. Going from a 90 to 7 days advance purchase increases the fare by only 30%. When booking 'normally' the price difference between 90-day out and 7-day out is much, much larger than 30%.

If I would not have the luxury to book early this would definitely be a good fit for me. For now..I'm not entirely convinced yet.

[edit]
In the last 12 months I have paid an average of 94 euro per leg; but that includes booking quite a few (A3) flex tickets to use vouchers to upgrade to business. Without those flex upgrades the average segment price would have been 88 euro. With 60-days advance purchase KLM's bundle charges 114 Euro per segment. Not a huge difference, but not large enough to permanently bind myself to KLM just yet. The idea of this programme is that the per-flight price becomes lower than booking normal trips, right?

Fabo.sk

Should be

I was thinking this over a bit and it has crossed my mind that there might very well be situation when 99 euro return pairs timing wouldn't be optimal, but then the truly optimal flight isn't flown by KLM anyway... and unfortunately this one is only valid for KLM operated flights.

By the way, any idea of the fare class it's in?

AlicorporateUK

The main purpose of the Flight Bundle (or TravelPass as AZ calls it), as far as I could gauge (as a user), is to grant you a number of flights at a given price when your travel plans are not entirely set and especially at peak times when fares tend to increase significantly (admittedly, it did save me quite a few ŁŁŁ during this past summer). The overall price of those flights you purchase through the bundle, however, is not necessarily deal as such (by direct experience: higher price 99% of the times), meaning that if your travel patterns are predetermined enough to allow you to book the cheapest fare months in advance, then the pass is just not worth it simply because you would be securing the cheapest fare for a given day at the time of booking. In my opinion, this is a decent tool for those who haven't got fixed dates and want to secure a number of flights at a given price, which could result in a bargain if you were to purchase the same flight at a later stage (nearer to departure date) and at increased fare.

G

Xandrios

Yes, agreed. That is similar to my conclusion, where I noticed that with 90-day advance purchase the advantages are minimal - yet with 7-day advance purchase they are very good. The price increase (going to 7 days advance purchase) is much smaller than when buying 'normal' tickets.

[edit] Removed part about one-ways. Even though these flights are sold per leg, you are not actually allowed to book one-ways.

AlicorporateUK

P.S.: I've just topped up my TravelPass starting from NOV16, 24 WAWFCOWAW one-way flights to be confirmed up to 24 hours from the travel date, it costed me roughly 120 GBP per flight which, given the circumstances (i.e. confirming travel right before departure basically), it's not bad deal at all methinks.

G

pjhartog

Here my fantastic experience in purchasing and using the flight bundle:

For several reasons, I had to wait long for booking flights on Dec 30 - and when I was able to (yesterday) GVA-AMS was only available in 2 flights in C class. So I decided to try a bundle in stead.
Purchasing a bundle, when I reached the payment stage the web page did not respond anymore. Regardless of chosen payment method or browser (safari and chrome).
For Bundle there is a separate support phone number - Dutch local number - but I reached a call centre and an Indian sounding guy told me to use Firefox, and had no idea why both chrome and safari would not work.
Firefox did not work either but eventually I purchased a bundle on chrome, although before reaching the confirmation page I got a server error. Since my payment was confirmed by the bank and later on I received an email confirming the purchase, this worked still.
Then I wanted to use the bundle to get flights, but whatever I did the portal where you choose flights (via the bundle portal) kept saying 'we are very busy, please try again in 15 minutes'. This I did from 4pm until 11pm on various platforms with the same result.
KLM Plat line couldn't help - they referred to the 'dedicated' (Optiontown) support line.
There I gold hold of my Indian friend - or his nephew - and was told to try again in may be half an hour, and when I explained I had been trying for hours, he told me I might be the cause of the excess traffic. Really, one person, 1 PC, with intervals ?
Meanwhile my last seats seemed to be gone the relevant flights, so I quickly booked ourselves on an HV flight that same day at still an outrageous price, but we have seats at least.
Later today I will call KLM and have the bundle cancelled. Dutch consumer laws leave room for that and I assume they will be cooperative, seeing I did nothing with the bundle and booked alternative flights, clearly demonstrating that I would have used the bundle if technology would have worked well.

If this really is the way this will work, I do not see a 2nd attempt happening soon here.

Will post on progress.

Xandrios

Thanks for posting. How much I loathe these kind of 'technical' support desks, who in the end have no clue what they are talking about..

In what way were you expecting this to work? If the flights had no availability in Y class, it would not have been possible to book with the Flight Bundle either, no? Or did you get a Business flight bundle (if that exists)?

Perhaps that message was popping up because the flights are sold out - have you tried different dates with better availability?

pjhartog

There was availability in Y but very expensive - compared to 'normal' and to the bundle.

And, yes, I tried different dates and different number of pax - same issue.

My hope was that if they had 5 Y seats at EUR 380 (one way) I could get them with the bundle that in my case worked out to EUR 125 one way

pjhartog

This afternoon I looked once more and now the system worked. It showed no availability for the dates I wanted, which is weird because at the same time the normal booking engine still showed Y seats (at quite a price).
Stranger even to get an email-campaign today that claims with a bundle, KLM will reserve a seat for you on each flight:

Xandrios

I just received an email from KLM about the flight bundle, and it now includes a Flying Blue status upgrade:

10 return flights bundle = free Silver status
20 return flights bundle = free Gold status

Which is quite a suitable offer. Much better than having to start at 0, earning status while flying these segments. Also, it may be a great way to jumpstart to Gold - especially with the new qualification requirements next year (getting status is much harder than keeping status). It does say that quantities are limited so the offer may not be around for long though.