United has long offered improved and discounted award availability to credit card holders and those with elite status in the MileagePlus program. It looks like Air France/KLM are taking a leaf out of United’s book for Flying Blue elite members.
One Mile At A Time has given an example of this. When searching for a business class flight from Miami to Madrid on an account without elite status, the lowest available award pricing was 98,500 miles. However, when logged in to his own account where he has Platinum status that pricing dropped to 60,000 miles.
It therefore looks like in at least some – if not all – cases, those with Flying Blue elite status will be able to access increased availability or cheaper award flights. That’s obviously disappointing to all of us who don’t have status with Flying Blue, especially considering how easy it is to transfer points to the program from every major transferable currency and the frequent transfer bonuses they offer.
That said, premium award availability over the last year or two (and more) has been pretty poor. If Air France/KLM are now opening up more availability to those whom it deems its more loyal customers, that makes sense and is better than there simply being no saver availability for anyone whatsoever.
That also makes the Air France/KLM credit card a much more appealing card than it was before. To earn Silver status in the Flying Blue program, you have to earn 100 XP. At the time of writing this, you get 60 XP when being approved for the card, as well as an additional 40 XP and 70,000 bonus miles when spending $3,000 in your first 90 days of being a cardmember. That’s a total of 100 XP which means you get Silver status for 12 months. Assuming that this increased/discounted award availability can be accessed by Silver members too rather than only those at even higher status levels, meeting the minimum spend requirement on the card could prove to be valuable.
Note that Flying Blue status doesn’t last for the rest of the year you earned it in and all of the following year like many US-based programs. Instead, you get 12 months of status from the date you earned it which means the clock is ticking once you’ve met that minimum spend requirement.
Retaining Silver status beyond those 12 months will be a little trickier though. The card offers 20 XP per year, as well as an additional 40 XP at your card anniversary date if you spent $15,000+ in the previous year. That leaves you 40 XP short, so you’d need to credit flights with Air France, KLM or other SkyTeam members to your account. To give an idea as to how many XP you’d earn on a flight, for a one way paid flight from Chicago to Prague via Paris you’d earn:
- Economy – 15 XP (10 XP for Chicago to Paris and 5 XP for Paris to Prague)
- Premium economy – 30 XP (20 XP for Chicago to Paris and 10 XP for Paris to Prague)
- Business – 45 XP (30 XP for Chicago to Paris and 15 XP for Paris to Prague)
- First – 75 XP (50 XP for Chicago to Paris and 25 XP for Paris to Prague)
One round trip in economy on that route would get you 30 of the additional XP you’d need to retain Silver status. Alternatively, New York to Paris or Amsterdam earns 10 XP each way. That means two round trip would earn a total of exactly 40 XP.
Do note that XP are only earned on paid flights; award flights don’t earn them.
Another way to earn XP is to contribute to Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) when taking a flight with Air France or KLM. It costs €10 (~$11.75) per XP, so you’re looking at spending $470 to earn an additional 40 XP (provided you’re given the option to buy that specific number of XP). That’s obviously far from ideal, but if you want to fly to and from Europe frequently in business class using transferable points, it’s an investment I imagine at least some people would be willing to make. The useful thing about earning XP via SAF is that I believe you can take advantage of that option even when flying on an award ticket.
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If this is really limited to Platinum status members it could make the paid Flying Blue status match offer interesting if/when it returns for US citizens (though it is still available to some other countries for those non-US readers!).
With the way Flying Blue’s program works you can match into a tier and then all XP earned after reaching a tier contributes towards qualifying for the next tier. This would let you take the approach Stephen outlined of opening the Flying Blue credit card and earning XP after status matching to say Gold tier so that the climb to 300XP for Platinum is easier (and more cost justifiable if you have to buy the remaining XP via SAF contributions).
Bilt Platinum members can take a similar approach matching to FB Gold.
Even if a charge to Platinum is a one time thing for a year, FB does a soft landing across tiers which means you’ll keep Gold for the next year and then Silver the year after – so a one year effort will get you 3 years of FB status.
I’m Platinum and I’m seeing lower point prices on Delta flights. A pleasant surprise.
That’s an interesting development. We’ve seen Delta, Aeroplan, etc. offer lower award pricing on their own flights for cardholders or elite members but I can’t recall an airline doing that for partner bookings before.
Same question. Has it been confirmed that status less than platinum also sees the good award rates and availability? Anybody can confirm?
It appears that only platinum members can see greater availability/better pricing of saver awards.