Skypass Program Changes
 

Not sure if this has been released in English yet, but things are changing (in 2022). They're also introducing "Pay With Cash AND Miles" feature. Value of miles dropping drastically for Q class - 70% down to 25%. "Silver, Gold, Diamond, Platinum" levels.

NAVER Blog link: ???? ??? : ??? ???

KE FAQ Page: ?????? ??? ??? ?????.

Oh wait here it is in English from their page: https://www.koreanair.com/content/ko...2_SKYPASS.html

Overall it looks like miles will be worth less than before with the distance-based award system. I haven't crunched all of the numbers for all routes, but award tickets for flights between the US and Korea will all cost more under the new system except for Honolulu which will cost slightly less than it does now.

On the other hand, changes to elite qualification look great. I'll easily qualify for gold under the new system (only a lowly morning calm now) which means sky priority, lounge access, skyteam elite plus, etc. I wish they would change this today instead of waiting until 2022.

Are they getting rid of lifetime elite status? Had plans to fly around 20K miles a year on KE from next year until eventually hitting MCP... Maybe I won't now. :(

There's no mention of lifetime status in the updated qualification requirements, so it looks like it's going away. The Q&A section does mention that existing Morning Calm Premium and Million Milers can keep their lifetime status. (Morning Calm Premium = lifetime Gold, Million Miler = lifetime Platinum)

Not sure how far along you were, but flying only 20K miles per year would have taken 25 years to qualify for MCP on the old system. Not sure that's something you can count on in any frequent flyer program. Skypass will almost certainly see many more changes over the next 25 years, if it even still exists at all.

Definitely sucks for anyone who is getting close to 500K though.

Yikes!!
Huge devaluation in miles for redemption...
KE miles will be worth a lot less going forward...super lame


Qualification seems to be on a yearly basis now instead of every 2 years..

Well this is sad, I am about 120k away from Morning calm premium and only fly around 35k per year...

So, from reading the announcement, it seems like redemptions will be safe through the end of March 2021. So, if I wanted, I could make a redemption end of March 2021 and still get today's redemption values? I have 120 in my account which is exactly enough for a 1 way F award from US to Australia. Haven't gotten around to doing that yet but it's my plan.

They're getting rid of Morning Calm Premium Club and Million Miler Club?! :mad:

Not going to be easy, but might want to do 120k in the remaining 2 years and get MCP switched to lifetime gold status... Off by around 100k I think it's still doable... That's about 7 return trips between HKG - JFK ish?

English website doesn't list all the details. According to Korean language site, it strongly implies

"Only KE or KE-coded flights are eligible for elite qualifying miles."

Seriously hope this is not the final one. Otherwise, what's the point of being in SkyTeam?

Nevermind, it seems like any lifetime membership will carry over to the new system... the things we do for FFPs all that to get slapped in the face. Oh well guess I'll be flying through ICN alot during the next two years.

This is a slight improvement over the current system where only miles from KE metal flights with a KE flight number qualify for Morning Calm status.

Looking at the changes overall, it seems lot worse for non-Korea based flyers than for flyers in Korea. Since awards are now priced by length of each segment, any trip that requires a connection in Korea requires significantly more miles than it did before. On the other hand, if you're going to/from Korea, there are several city pairs that will be less expensive now than they were before (Nearby cities in China/Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, Hawaii, Dubai, Russia, Brisbane, etc.)

Same for elite qualification, if you're based on Korea you can realistically do all of your flying on KE and KE codeshares. If you're based elsewhere in the world, you probably won't be able to get status miles for all of your flights unless you only fly to Korea/Asia.

Morning Calm status indeed looked at KE only (more complicated than this though), but higher level looked at SkyTeam flight miles as well. Now, unless KE rewords some, it appears that across all levels, only KE flights matter when it comes to the annual evaluation of elite status.

I 100% agree with you that the new system works favorably for those living in Korea and to some extent, Koreans living abroad.