The Air France-KLM Flying Blue program has just rolled out a useful new perk for members, which seems entirely positive. I’m very happy to see this.
In this post:
Flying Blue adds three tiers of Choice Benefits
With the Flying Blue program, you can unlock elite status based on how many XPs you rack up (“XP” stands for “experience points”), as this is the metric for earning status. The system of qualifying for status works a bit differently than with other programs:
- 100 XPs gets you Flying Blue Silver status
- You then need 180 additional XPs to earn Flying Blue Gold status
- You then need 300 additional XPs to earn Flying Blue Platinum status
- If you unlock a total of 900 XPs in a program year you can earn Flying Blue Ultimate status (note that for Flying Blue Ultimate, these need to be “UXPs” rather than “XPs,” with the distinction being that they need to be earned exclusively on Air France and KLM, rather than on partner airlines)
Anyway, arguably Flying Blue hasn’t been doing a whole lot to incentivize incremental business for those who earn Platinum status, given that Ultimate status requires three times as much activity. So along those lines, Flying Blue has introduced some interim rewards based on how many UXPs you rack up (again, these are XPs earned directly on Air France and KLM):
- When members unlock 450 UXPs, they can choose 15,000 bonus miles, 20 bonus XP/UXPs, a gift of Flying Blue Silver for someone else, or an overdraft of 20,000 miles
- When members unlock 600 UXPs, they can choose 20,000 bonus miles, 30 bonus XP/UXPs, a gift of Flying Blue Gold for someone else, or an overdraft of 30,000 miles
- When members unlock 750 UXPs, they can choose 30,000 bonus miles, one upgrade voucher, a gift of Flying Blue Platinum for someone else, or an overdraft of 40,000 miles
This is a great development for Flying Blue
Flying Blue is one of the programs I have elite status with, and I think it’s a generally interesting and compelling loyalty scheme. Earning Flying Blue Platinum isn’t too difficult, though one downside of the program has been lack of incremental perks for those who over qualify.
It’s a long ways to go from Platinum to Ultimate. In the past, Flying Blue had unlimited rollover XPs, so whatever activity you had in a particular year would automatically roll over to the next year. Now you’re capped at a rollover of 300 XPs, meaning you can only earn status for the following year through the rollover feature, and not for multiple years.
Anyway, I’d say these updates are positive. For example, if you’re a Flying Blue Ultimate member, this nets you an extra 65,000 miles per year (assuming you choose the mileage option), or there are several other combinations you could consider.
I do find it funny how you can either get a good number of miles, or get a marginally larger mileage overdraft. It seems pretty obvious which is the better value there, and I can’t imagine many people will choose the overdraft option. But I guess there’s nothing wrong with giving people the choice.
I’m not saying this is the approach I’ll take to requalify for elite status, but if you wanted to be as efficient as possible, there would be merit to earning 600 UXPs in one year, and then earning 0 UXPs in the next year. That would get you two years of Platinum, and since you’d earn 600 UXPs in one year, you’d also earn two sets of bonus rewards.
Bottom line
The Flying Blue program has just added Choice Benefits, and the idea is that members who overqualify for Platinum status can pass three different thresholds to earn extra rewards, before reaching Ultimate status. Assuming there’s no catch here, this sounds like a very nice new aspect of the program, and it’ll make me think of maybe engaging even more.
What do you make of Flying Blue introducing Choice Benefits?
Ben,
I'm delighted you find this upgrade idea interesting. Six months ago, I proposed this idea to Air France management. I also suggested another idea, not advantageous for customers, but profitable for the company. This involved selling upgrades to 1F seats on A350s and similar seats, which were previously free for Platinum members. These seats offer a significant advantage over other business class seats.
Since Hyatt offers a bonus every 10 nights, I thought...
Ben,
I'm delighted you find this upgrade idea interesting. Six months ago, I proposed this idea to Air France management. I also suggested another idea, not advantageous for customers, but profitable for the company. This involved selling upgrades to 1F seats on A350s and similar seats, which were previously free for Platinum members. These seats offer a significant advantage over other business class seats.
Since Hyatt offers a bonus every 10 nights, I thought we could do the same for airlines, and they listened. As you mentioned, going from 300 to 900 Ultimate Pass Points (UXP) is a long journey. Setting intermediate goals motivates customers to progress, to fly more to earn a reward.
My next step is this: The number of Ultimate customers is not very high yet, but the next step is to encourage them to accumulate well beyond 900 UXP in order to benefit from additional advantages, beyond simply carrying over points to the following year.
Regards
There is a big fundamental issue with Flying Blue XO though, since its latest change on how surplus is treated, officially you can only make 600 usable XP that counts towards keeping your status (-300 XP) as well as another 300 XP surplus. Anything above 600 XP is therefore lost and forfeited and does nothing for you (especially when your already Platinum as one of the only goal really is your status counting towards your...
There is a big fundamental issue with Flying Blue XO though, since its latest change on how surplus is treated, officially you can only make 600 usable XP that counts towards keeping your status (-300 XP) as well as another 300 XP surplus. Anything above 600 XP is therefore lost and forfeited and does nothing for you (especially when your already Platinum as one of the only goal really is your status counting towards your Platinum for Life years which is 10 years consecutively) u can have 900 or even a 1000 XP but only 600 are kept for maintaining and 1 year of surplus in keeping platinum while rest is gone. Unlike before, make 3000 XP and your basically set Platinum for Life
Calling their program "interesting" sounds to me like a polite code word for something else.
From the email i received i had concluded that it should also be possible to earn these bonusses not from uxp but also from just xp. I will wait and see if this is correct, but 450 uxp is not very attractive imo.
How does the overdraft work in practice? I realize there's already an overdraft for Plat / Ultimate so folks may have experience. It says on the benefits table that you just repay it with future earned miles - but what if you overdraft and just never earn more miles? Do they send you a bill? In other words, if they're not going to chase the overdraft - aren't you better off taking the additional 20k overdraft versus 15k miles and just living in the overdraft?
This is a positive development for sure and offers incentives to go past 300XP even when 900XP seems unattainable, but is it me or are those benefits really poor? I'm not sure that someone who hits 450XP a year will get excited by an extra 15k miles... A real incentive would have been upgrade vouchers introduced from 450XP and not 750, but I don't know. I've been platinum for a few years and as much...
This is a positive development for sure and offers incentives to go past 300XP even when 900XP seems unattainable, but is it me or are those benefits really poor? I'm not sure that someone who hits 450XP a year will get excited by an extra 15k miles... A real incentive would have been upgrade vouchers introduced from 450XP and not 750, but I don't know. I've been platinum for a few years and as much as I like the idea of choice benefits, those won't motivate me to go past 300XP.
@Ben- I assume that this applies to also earning XPs instead of UXP?
Well done, FlyingBlue. While seemingly every program is devaluing and screwing over loyal customers, it's nice, for once, to see a program actually try to reward them instead.
AF/KL remains some of my personal favorites (incredible food on AF; and, maybe I need to book some more flights with KL; get some more delft blue houses).