My flight back from Luanda Angola last month was with this airline instead of the AF one it should have been.

Absolutely no issues and in fact, they also had two AF employees working onboard to ensure the service provided was at least equal to the AF experience.

One of my reservations this summer has been changed from KLM B737 to Privilege Style A321. Which from the above reports sounds like a bad deal if seat pitch is worse than KLM aircraft. We are in business, has anyone flown them in C and has first hand experience with seat comfort/pitch there?

We are on award tickets and honestly I'd really like to take an earlier flight (for scheduling reasons). Wonder if KLM or Flying Blue(?) would allow changing the ticket because of the carrier swap..

You're FB Platinum so you can cancel your booking without penalty.

Right, though I'd still like to fly for the same price in miles. The current rate has about tripled.

If the pitch is as bad as P6 themselves say, I'd definitely call to ask to be rebooked to the earlier flight :)

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...c13046b40b.png

The AFKL policy allows changes but with fare recalculation:

• Customers who no longer wish to travel on the wet leased flight are eligible for:
  • A flight change, without a change fee. Only the fare difference applies, if applicable - or -
  • Refund. A non-refundable EMD TCVT valid for one year will be issued.

Not sure how this would apply to awards though.

Interestingly for me those values are populated for some of their aircraft. It looks like they have two A321's, one configured with Y214 and one as Y230. The &214 one shows some details:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...490208bc40.png

Note that the pitch is the same for all seats in the aircraft, which is clearly a lot lower than on KL aircraft. Its an all-economy config. The KLM 737 has 33" according to their website. Of course we are splitting hairs here, and probably I'm not due any kind of free change - but probably still worth trying.

​​​​​​​I do wonder though if the Y230 variant has even lower pitch..

Probably not helpful, but I'm on this plane in June in C. Booked 1A as the KLM app indicated row 1 has "extra legroom". Let's see if it's more than the 0' mentioned above ;)

Well, zero is a lot lower than 31.

Seriously, the additional seats must have an effect on pitch, unless these are extra slim seats on the 230 version and the 214 one has older seats that have some padding left.

Caught a glimpse of the privilege style at HAM.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...02c1cfd677.jpg

KL has 33 inch pitch in economy comfort or business intra-Europe, not regular Y. Regular Y seems similar to KLM

A Platinum friend who had exactly the same (i.e. swap from KL to Privilege Style aircraft, and also the desire to have an earlier flight) had a call with the Platinum Line who initially refused the change. He persevered however and made up a story that he would be terrified to fly with a Spanish airline and only ever flies with KLM (neither of which were true) and it worked - in the end they allowed the change without penaly or charge.

This looks like the most nondescript plane in the world. A livery that you'd see in stock photos or mockups where they're afraid to use a real brand

Isn't this kind of standard for ACMI operators?

After all, they make their business by operating flights on behalf of other airlines, topped up with whatever charters they can arrange of their own. Given that their "raison d'être" is to fulfil other airlines' scheduled flights, there's no great need, or reason, for them to "scream" their own brand identity on their aircraft, because they're not/rarely operating flights on their own behalf.

And they don't need to "advertise" in this way. When an airline (such as KLM) needs someone to step in and take over a certain number of flights, they're not going to go on a metric such as - which of the various ACMI operators out there has the most DISTINCTIVE and boldly branded planes or eyecatching livery? That's the outfit I want to call upon!!!

(Of course, in certain situations, where an ongoing/longterm contract is in place, or where a certain number of aircraft are actually dedicated to that leasing airline, there can be arrangements made to change the livery - such as when Aer LIngus was operating Virgin Atlantic's "Little Red" airline at LHR with 4 dedicated A320s painted in custom Virgin livery)

A lot of ACMI operators leave their planes all white for easy stickerage, apparently Privilege Style likes to have some level of their own brand, even if it's nondescript, at least it's consistent.

Some do, some don't :)

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...79443b79e.jpeg

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...cd9728342.jpeg