Continental / KLM sharing
 

My parents have been foolishly taken in with the ST / FD blurb. They need to go to USA and were told that instead of going via AMS they can now go direct from Edinburgh or Glasgow non stop to the USA on Continental. (cant remember which one he told me )

They thought great as they are partner of KLM now we will book in Y and upgrade.

WRONG.!!!!!

Continental have told them they do not allocate any seats for KLM for upgrades and will not be doing so. Depsite only 4 out of all the biz class availability being taken.

KLM still insist they can upgrade and are waiting for a reply from Continental and the first request was denied !!!!!

How come Continental can be polite and honest about this and yet KLM still lead you a merry dance. They are really brassed off about this as its there 50th wedding anniversary as well.

Any suggestions.

They can upgrade on CO. There are numerous threads in this forum about people who have done exactly that.

When you contact CO and say you want to upgrade with KL miles - they will say - no way!.

They are wrong. They are not being honest, they just don't know what they are talking about ...

You are able to upgrade on CO using KL miles but you have to go through KLM on this.

IF you can find upgradeable seats. It's possible in theory.... But it can be tough.

Good point! :)

Just for the record, upgrades on CO come out of "R" class.

Most CO agents do not know whether you can upgrade using FD miles or, for that matter, what you can use your FD miles for on CO. They do not deal with FD requests, so why should they know? You need to speak to a FD agent and ask them to request it from CO.
While not foolproof, a good way to guess whether there is going to be any likelihood of a seat is to check on the continental website for standard business awards using Onepass miles. If there is plenty of availability, then there might be some upg available using FD miles. If there is no availability at standard levels, then it is unlikely that there is any seat available for upgrades using FD miles.

Do partner upgrades come from the same "R" bucket as CO NonePass upgrades?

Actually Steve is right - albeit in a roundabout way ;)

Upgrades on the daily CO Scottish transatlantic services, EDI-EWR and GLA-EWR, are all but impossible if using KL miles. Senior sales staff at CO have told me award availability is extremely restricted; even to CO elite members it is available only by special request to inventory management. KL elite members haven't got a hope. "Very unlikely" says CO. KL can make all the requests in the world on behalf of its members - it won't make any difference.

There is a fantastic opportunity for SkyTeam to soak up the lucrative Scottish central belt market by offering an attractive, frequent European service through at least three European hubs (from EDI: 3x daily to CDG, 5x daily to AMS and 2x daily to PRG) and a meaningful service to the Americas through one well-placed hub (from EDI: daily to EWR). But if customer service is poor, published elite benefits impossible to obtain and frequency to hubs inadequate then SkyTeam will p1ss away the huge advantage it has over LHR-hubbed rivals. Where are the SkyTeam promotions and advertising in this area? EDI and GLA could be among the most lucrative west European markets for SkyTeam. Where is the joint ground handling? Where are the properly handled reciprocal benefits? Where is the decent shared lounge? (CO, quite sensibly, uses the BD lounge at EDI). Where are the adverts promoting the newer routes? Where is the SkyTeam ticket desk?

Only SkyTeam could make connecting through LHR seem attractive :rolleyes:

So to sum it up there is "no chance " and "Absolutely no F****** chance" regardless of the fact it is a programme where you can enjoy the benefits of spending your miles to treat yourself and and enjoy the luxury of business class. mmmmm seems a bit misleading to Joe Public if you ask me.

I assume they will hvae no chance to use the lounges as well, I think they are Gold or PE, cant remember.

Well, the programme is not centered on the possibility of obtaining reward upgrades on other carriers. To be fair, most programmes will not even allow you to upgrade on partner carriers at all. There are many things wrong with the FD programme but complaining about the lack of availability of upgrade awards on CO ex Scotland seems to me scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Alastair: I am puzzled by that lack of availability ex EDI and GLA using OP miles. Obviously, there is less availablity on 752 operated routes. Still, co.com seems to indicate a reasonable amount of availability for standard standard business class awards (19 days out of 30 in April 2005on EDI-EWR) so I don't understand why EDI-EWR would be so much more difficult to upgrade for CO members than other routes.

As to the more general point, I agree that there seems to be little integration in ST and the benefits of the alliance are anything but maximised. But then, they have barely digested CO, NW and KL which constitutes a major expansion. Perhaps we should give them some time to get their act together (not that expect much, but let's be charitable).

As puzzled as you, but their head of sales was quite explicit about this - to 'protect' the premium cabin and revenue. Availability "very tight" in his own words for One Pass members and even tighter for non-One Pass. I have been trying to use KL miles to get a normal EDI-EWR-SEA award in either cabin since the route started in June, without success. EDI-EWR is the problem sector. I was hoping it would be easier during autumn but FD could only find me dates in December so I just spent the miles elsewhere. No big deal, but a bit disappointing.
True, although the wider point I was (clumsily) making is that CO could "save" KL from the mire by making SkyTeam an attractive option again. KL lost a lot of regular flyers in Scotland when the UK domestic routes were abandoned. Maybe some would give KL/AF another chance if they could enjoy reciprocal benefits. It would benefit CO, too. But if everyone has the same experience as Steve's mum then there's little hope ;)

SkyTeam have been gifted a lucrative market and I hope they realise what they could achieve here when they get their act together ^

My Mum and dad are not mega flyers but have acheived their status all piad for out of their own pockets.

They were well taken in by all the publicity that for sure misleads people who dont have the knowledge or expereince of the likes of Ft'ers.

I cant see the logic in this as anyone with half a brain would be advising their employers about the dangers of this kind of publicity yet KLM seem to continue to make statements that sail very close to the wind.

Funny they dont put this on TV as they would get nailed for it.

Then again that gets me wondering who thinks up of these themes for anti-aging creams and certain types of shampoo with the most amazingly named features to them. Almost as good as European select. ;)

Come on, Steve. KL do not actively advertise the possiblity of redeeming for upgrade awards on Continental. It is barely mentioned at all in most of the literature. Most of it refers to the possibility of upgrading on KL or NW. I would bet that the overwhelming majority of FD members are not even aware that CO upgrades are possible.
It is fair enough to complain about the often shambolic FD non-helpdesk, the joke of European 'Select', the decrease in awards inventory all round and for PEs specifically etc... but complaining about KL misleading customers by dangling the promise of easy availability of upgrades from EDI/GLA to EWR on CO just does not ring true.

Nick, my parents cannot be alone, they saw the marketing as a "one stop" theme, they certainly are not stupid and they cannot be alone in this situation. Bear in mind most people on here clock up fairly large amounts of travel time and get to know many little things that often airline staff dont even know about.

Anyway on a positive note for KLM FD, I have been contacted regarding this posting by what I understand is a pretty senior member of the FD team and he is looking to see what he can do to help, which shows KLM do read this and will sometimes do things that could be so small but mean so much to passengers that they might just have some life in them yet.

The first airline who gets to grips with this kind of thing and then shouts loudly will stand out from the rest by a mile. I understand this gentleman will be contacting my parents and I am sure they will at least feel they have been helped, even if they cant spend their miles.

Come on KLM do more of this and use it in your publicity to win back what you have lost. You never know I might even want to come back one day.