Flying Blue, the rewards program for Air France and KLM (along with a handful of other carriers), has just had an unannounced devaluation. The news, which was first reported by Travel on Points, broke this morning as the changes appear to have gone into effect overnight.
After the change, the award pricing base charges are slightly higher than before, though I’m seeing reports that some routes have increased dramatically. This is a disappointing development as Flying Blue was one of my favorite programs for Premium Cabin award redemptions but there may be a silver lining.
While the changes have occurred globally, for the sake of this article I’ll focus on flights between the United States and Europe as those are the ones that I’ve booked the most.
Prior to today, one way Business Class flights started at 50,000 miles one way between the U.S. and Europe. Now, Business Class flights start at 60,000 miles one way. Economy and Premium Economy flights have also increased from 20,000 to 25,000 and 35,000 to 40,000 miles respectively.
Increases between 15-25% appear to have been applied to flights across the board. I haven’t seen or heard of any base, saver level, fares jumping by more than that.
While I’ve found flights at the base level in the past, it has become increasingly difficult to find. On recent flights with Air France and KLM I’ve paid well over 50,000 miles for a Business Class seat with some redemptions opportunities asking for more than one million miles! (For the record, I didn’t book those).
It’s never fun seeing award redemption rates go up but there appears to be a silver lining to this change as multiple outlets are reporting that Flying Blue is expecting to increase award availability. Those don’t appear to have been loaded in yet but, I’ll gladly pay a little more for access to more space instead of searching for hours or days to find a good redemption opportunity.
I’ll reserve any final judgements on this devaluation from Flying Blue until I see whether more availability opens up. If flights can be found at the saver level, the program still will be one of my favorites, along with Air Canada’s Aeroplan, for booking Transatlantic Business Class flights.
Summary
Flying Blue, the loyalty program for Air France and KLM, dropped a no-notice devaluation on January 13th. While devaluations are never fun, this one doesn’t appear to be too terrible especially if it leads to more award availability. I’m curious as to what others are seeing when looking for flights via Flying Blue after the changes.
Thanks for your article I’ve found by looking for comment regarding crazy fare eventually offered by flying blue at the moment. As a French FB member, it has became impossible to find business reward under 120k miles between Europe and the US. Even CDG-JFK which were basically and easily at 50k are no longer at that price… CDG-PHX which is the route I’m most interested with averages 700k miles in March or April while it was generally easy to find it between 50 and 70k before. I think this is not really fair from the program to their loyal customers…
I’ve had the best luck with Flying Blue when I’m booking to/from somewhere other than AMS/CDG. Last year I tacked on a rail segment from CDG-Brussels and it drastically brought my ticket cost down. I’ve got 2 upcoming flights JFK-AMS-DXB and IST-CDG-DFW that, while not at 50k, were what I’d consider decent redemptions (Under 100k per ticket). Likely could have done better if my dates were more flexible.