Air France has sent an email to members today to announce that they are now allowing for first class award redemptions on select partners, while teasing that first class redemptions will expand to more partners soon. Additionally, Air France / KLM Flying Blue has a new Caribbean partner in Winair, which is based in Sint Maarten (SXM). Unfortunately, redemption rates in Winair are awful, but nonetheless today’s news adds more options for members and that’s great to see.
Air France / KLM Flying Blue adding first class partner redemptions
Air France KLM Flying Blue has historically only allowed first class redemptions on their own metal and then only for members with elite status in their own program. However, it is great to see partner first class redemptions enabled on Garuda Indonesia, China Eastern and Xiamen Air. The email teases that more partners will be added soon for first class redemptions.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any first class availability on the routes and dates I tried that are served by Garuda Indonesia, China Eastern, or Xiamen Air.
One nice thing is that you can quickly tell which routes should have first class redemptions. Routes that are only served by two-cabin aircraft only allow the option for economy or business class redemptions:
However, routes that theoretically should be served with a first class cabin have the option to choose “La Premiere” from the drop-down menu.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any first class awards available in test searches, but it’s great to know that they should be possible at times. I’m sure that many members would love to see Flying Blue open things up and allow first class redemptions on Air France, which is pretty renowned for its first class cabin and ground services (I imagine in part because it is inaccessible with miles for most of us).
Air France / KLM Flying Blue adds partnership with Winair
The other piece of news announced today is that Flying Blue is now partnering with Caribbean airline Winair, which is based on Sint Maarten. They have a route map that looks pretty cool, with both some destinations I’d like to visit and some I hadn’t known before.
Winair is apparently a Dutch government-owned airline and it serves a number of airports on smaller islands in the Leeward Islands and Lesser Antilles.
For instance, I wasn’t familiar with Saba or Sint Eustasius. Both are pretty close to Sint Maarten. While the scheduled flight time to Saba is 15 or 20 minutes, I’ve read that it really only takes about 12 minutes.
Unfortunately, redemption rates are unattractive on Winair. For instance, the flights above cost $149-$153. Alternatively, you’d pay 19,000 miles and $48.32 via Flying Blue.
After accounting for the taxes (which are included in the cash prices but additional on the awards), you’re only getting around half a cent per point in value.
That seemed consistent on every Winair route I checked. I had hoped that perhaps a route like Sint Maarten to Aruba (AUA) would present better value, but it doesn’t. At 48,000 miles and $63.32, this example only yields about 0.54c per point against the $323 cash rate for the same flight (and if you’re willing to connect and turn a 3.5hr journey into a 24hr one, Spirit is only $253).
It’s nice that you’ll potentially have some connectivity on awards flying between Europe and the Caribbean, but the unfortunate part is that on every example I checked, a single ticket that included a leg on Winair just added the cost of the Winair redemption cumulatively on top of the cost of the award to/from Sint Maarten.
For example, see this economy class award from Paris to Sint Maarten (SXM) on April 10th. At 76,000 miles one-way in economy class, I wouldn’t consider this a good deal, but that’s beside the point.
When you add on a leg to Saba on Winair, Air France is simply adding the 19,000 mile cost of that flight and pricing the whole thing at 95,000 miles.
In other words, there is no added value to booking that as one ticket apart from perhaps your luggage allowance carrying over or protection in a case of irregular operations. There is no price advantage to booking it together. I imagine the same is true even if you were able to make this a stopover point — since the award prices like two separate awards added together, there isn’t a big advantage to booking it as one ticket as far as I can see.
Hopefully we’ll see some variance in pricing on these routes, but for the time being, they seem to be pegged right around 0.5c to 0.6c per mile, which just isn’t a good use of miles.
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RE: Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any first class awards available in test searches, but it’s great to know that they should be possible at times.
Knowing you, Nick, I’m sure you checked far out and close in (and some spots in between). I know some other bloggers reported being able to find some first class space, but I hope this isn’t like what happened to trans-Pacific business class space on Aeroplan or STARLUX business class space on Alaska, where the space got vacuumed up super fast by legit actors or possibly miles brokers.
[…] Flying Blue program and Caribbean carrier Winair are expanding their partnership, as flagged by Frequent Miler. It’s cool to see Winair finally get an airline partner with reciprocal mileage earning and […]
[…] Flying Blue program and Caribbean carrier Winair are expanding their partnership, as flagged by Frequent Miler. It’s cool to see Winair finally get an airline partner with reciprocal mileage earning and […]