Air France – KLM Flying Blue Award Stealth Devaluation January 13, 2025

Air France and KLM’s Flying Blue were tinkering with partner awards back in December (read more here) that they later blamed on partner fare mistakes (read more here).

However, they have now rolled out a change in the number of miles required for their own awards on Air France and KLM metal with ZERO ADVANCE NOTICE to program members.

You can access Flying Blue here.

It is difficult to tell precisely how much the prices have increased, as Flying Blue conveniently doesn’t have award charts, but they seem to have been raised by 10% to 20% across the board.

When Flying Blue significantly raised partner award rates in December with no notice, the head of Flying Blue, Mr. Ben Lipsey, issued the following statement on FlyerTalk:

We were made aware of some mistake fares on partners (notably 1500/4000 miles for shorthaul Y/J on DL).

Being Christmas Day, we didn’t have the active resources in place to fix the root cause so we put in a temporary fix which applied a minimum price on partners.

We will do our best to correct the airline partner pricing as soon as possible. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Mr Lispey has now been RADIO SILENT.

Previous “Mistake” Devaluation:

Air France – KLM Flying Blue Christmas Night Award Massacre

Air France – KLM Flying Blue Walks Back Award Chart Changes – Blames Partner Mistakes

Conclusion

It doesn’t build trust between the program and its members if the award rates are changed with no advance notice to program members who may have been building up the balance of a specific award in mind.

These flash devaluations don’t really affect those who only convert credit card points to the program as needed but loyal members who actually fly with the airline and credit partner airline and other transactions there.

Consumer agencies in respective countries should take action and require that these loyalty programs give proper advance notice if and when these award rates are “adjusted.”

Now, they do these in the middle of the night, hoping no one realizes what happened. It would be far better if they gave adequate notice, and then members could redeem at the current rates for a specific number of days until the new charts are in place.

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