Flying Blue Devaluation, Sort Of: Higher Pricing, But More Award Seats

When you post photos of AF 777-300s, could you be sure to only use ones for planes that have La Première?

Thank you.

@Ben- is it really a devaluation, or would it be fair to refer to this change as pointflation (points inflation)?

Po-tay-toes.

Po-tah-toes

“Arguably the bigger issue with Flying Blue is the lack of saver level award availability in premium cabins.”

+1000

what is that?

Ben, I can’t find any saver seats availability anymore in LAX to Europe. Used to be there st the booking horizon

Where are you seeing availability, even a year out?

I’m lucky enough to be going in May for 200k rt lax-Cdg-ams but starting to look for 2026.

The 'from' values in the ready reckoner on the FB website haven't gone up, so, given the recent IT cock-up, it may be slightly premature to conclude that there's really been a devaluation.

They'll probably leave like one super-leisure route at the old pricing so they can still claim the floor hasn't changed.

Ben,

I've been looking for a trip that'll open up in the next 6 weeks.

Manchester to Kuala Lumpur. It's gone from 77k to 85k points. In itself not good, but also, through the second half of the year there were generally 5+ days available at saver rates most months, as of yesterday. Now, nothing at all. Cheapest is 200k. This looks like a more substantial adjustment than what you've seen so far.

Let's get the other Ben to explain why they felt this was necessary.

Came straight here when I saw the one available saver date from RDU during the latter part of this year jump from 50k to 60k. While I'm not averse to hunting for availability, saver seats are way down from last year.

PPT-LAX just went from 92K to 113K. I wouldn’t call that a mild devaluation.

I haven’t seen any of the “normal” 70,000 mile FB award flights from IAD-CDG that I’ve booked many times in the past . The lowest I’m seeing, even a year out, is 116,00 miles.

Looks like La Première award prices also went up, ugh...

I would argue the impact of the devaluation is not so much the saver awards, but more with the 'normal' awards. Availability for saver was pretty sparse to begin with anyhow. 50 to 60k is not that bad.

However when booking normal awards the impact seems a lot bigger. (I guess they did percentage increases across the board). I.e. I often booked ~90k awards, which with a transfer bonus was not a bad deal and availability quite good. Now those all went up by 20-30k, making these quite expensive.

I see savers 50k ->60k; 90k awards up to 110k, 150k awards up to 185k.

It's worth noting that you will often ONLY see the lowest AF-KLM pricing if you're searching for destinations that are not non-stop to/from CDG / AMS. For example, say you want a biz class flight from IAD on Nov 28. If you fly IAD - CDG it may be 500K. Search the same flight but go on to LIS i.e., IAD - CDG - LIS and it may price at 60k. But if you choose the same flight and go on to FRA (i.e., IAD - CDG - FRA) and it'll be 150k. Yet the whole time, the IAD-CDG flight segment is the same plane/flight. It's bizarre.

Married segment logic.

This is the problem with a no notice devaluation. It sounds like a good story, if a slight alteration sees more availability, but why not come out and say it rather than leaving it to you to chase up? And just makes everyone panic in the meantime.

However your speed in updating this developing story must be commended. Well done.

I mean, if you are a loyal flyer of the program, then this might be a reason to shift away to something different. But if you are transferring points to FB (as many in the US are) rather than crediting flights, then the story doesn't really matter. Unless there are real seats for reasonable rates, people will book through another program (or collect cash back). If more availability opens, then people will be happy. If it is still too sparse, then people will eventually stop searching the program first. It is a very transactional relationship.

One thing I wish Flying Blue didn't have and which they devalued in the last year was the €70 change/cancel fee (used to be €50). The US carriers are the best with allowing for more flexible plans after the pandemic with virtually no change/cancel fees on award flights and also being able to get flight credit back if booking cash fares.

So mad. I practically had a flight booked last night at the old 20k rate. I just lost the 20% transfer award in an instant! 🙁

Honestly, this is something I don't mind too much. There are people that sit on 3-4 different award itineraries, knowing they will cancel most of them. I think creating some friction and some disincentive to sit on multiple award flights helps with availability. I know things happen, but I cannot remember needing to cancel more than a handful of flights in my life, even with significant advanced planning. If you can't commit, don't book. Re-booking should have a cost, and I understand why programs find it to be a big hassle.

Now, the Etihad rules on this have probably gone too far...

Interestingly, I have never had real issues with award availability on FB, I could find transatlantic business class seats even around the Christmas period.

It looks like availability issues might have been confined to routes to N. America, and it's a shame they went for an across-the-board devaluation instead of just leveraging dynamic pricing to absorb that additional demand.

It's rather ironic that, instead of trying to pinch the customers ditched by BA, AFKL have decided to undermine the value proposition of their FFP at this point in time.

It's also rather amusing that the much maligned DL miles end up being worth a lot more than Flying Blue ones when it comes to flying AF in business (e.g. Europe-Francophone Africa: 65k DL miles without surcharges or 85k+surcharges on Flying Blue).

I'll stick to keeping a small balance and using FB as my backup programme for short haul redemptions on the likes of GOL and COPA.

That is definitely something that has always bugged me about FB awards, even if I'm generally connecting through either regardless. I really hate hidden city shenanigans.

Let the train take the strain!

I'm also not seeing any more saver fares than before today, so I'm very interested in seeing how much more they release going forward (though I am highly skeptical.) What is more than practically zero?

Oh please that is such a pile of horseshit! Searching RIGHT NOW the lowest possible one way Business Class is 151k from SFO to CDG.......ALL YEAR NOTHING......MOST of the time it is 214K or 375K ONE WAY!
So for Air France to claim that they are honoring the pricing they lied to you about is JUST A LIE!
And after moving to Paris there is no way I am going to use them in Europe as opposed to the superior TGV..............

Glad I booked 2 J tickets on AF CDG-IAD for 50,000 each a couple of weeks ago. However, I agree that 60,000 is still a bargain compared to many carriers pricing. BTW, to get the 50,000 I searched every East and Midwest gateway within a 3-4 day range and found these on 1 day to IAD. I'm taking positioning flights from CLT (leaving out of BOS on VS for 35,000 miles each in J (or 25,000 with the 40% Amex transfer bonus which is a steal)) so where the flight ended didn't really matter. Have to be very flexible to get best value from all these programs)

I got 50,000 J from CDG-IAD for 2 tickets on November 11 this year. Transferred about 22,000 Chase points to go with the 78,000 points I earned with the SUB (spent a little more than necessary) on their $95 Bank of America credit card. Basically a free trip so loving it

Good luck taking the TGV to SFO

ugh. guess last summer when i snagged 56k across the atlantic to CDG was the last time i get to have that. For that, I booked in Feb to fly in July.

sad!

Flying blue don't have good redemption out of either sfo or lax. Been that way for years especially sfo. Neither does delta, ual etc. AA is ok. There are the occasional deals. You will do better departing Europe into lax. I did however get sea to ams this xmas for 50k in business before this devaluation.

I’m sorry but where do you see these cheap flights? The points are astronomical! Tested a month ago biz class GIG-CDG-GVA return 9 April to 26 April…337,500 miles?? An outbound on the 6th of 700,000!! Il hoping these are return mileage fares. How is this even remotely normal…? Have I missed something?

What they promise and what they'll do are 2 different things. ANA for example devalued and promised they would lower the tax. We'll they did 1 of those things and it's not lowering the tax. I had to rebook my flight from lax to haneda from last year to later this year. The points went from 85k to 115k and the tax remained at around $500. I saw no difference in tax on any routes that I searched.

@Never In Doubt ......
"Married" and "Logic" in the same sentence when referring to something that does not make sense.

What I can say out of LAX the number of points required are now double to triple what they were 2 years ago....just looked at their recently loaded dates and the minimum is 3x and often now 5-8x what they were….rediculous.eg 400k + to CDG one way

GRU tends to be a bit better. UX redemptions might also work my- I think they have a couple of additional destinations in Brazil, plus ASU and MVD.

Yeah, one way LAX-CDG on several dates I’m viewing in April are 400,000 miles one way. SkyMiles looks like a bargain at those prices!

I was able to get a CDG-LAX in early May for about 100K… that’s the best I’ve been able to find.

AF fly to a large collection of cities in North America. MEX is, what, 3 hours from SFO? I found 40k premium economy availability from there for a random date I checked in November.

I can almost never find any flying blue availability for north america routes. I read all the great FB reviews burt my points go unused. What am i doing wrong?

Have you tried MEX or CUN?

I’m gutted by the change. I was going to book award fare for my family to celebrate my wife’s birthday, open jaw from ORD-ZNZ, JRO-ORD. That was originally quoted at 280,000 total miles. It’s now 320,000.

I booked LAX-ARN for 80k in june on AF.

Congratulations

The ones with La Premiere have the older (at this point, the oldest in the longhaul fleet) business class seats.

Thank you, although avoiding large mileage balances is not really rocket science, especially when it comes to dynamically-priced programmes.

I think everyone is missing the most important thing, the SURCHARGES went up to just over $1000 from under $400 on a one way Asia-USA J booking

Are you sure? I just checked several routes from US (both East and West coast) to Asia and saw a little over $400 in fees in J for all of them.

I fly JFK-CDG route and I've only seen a handful of the previous saver award 20k in economy before this devaluation. On average I'd see 25k-40k. If you check once a day, the award price can change higher or lower (highest i've seen in economy over 100k).

In the examples i follow the devaluation is at 40%. Thats a pretty steep devaluation.

I am struggling to spend my measly 330k of miles because their dynamic pricing is ridiculous. 554k each from BKK-BHX? Are they mad?

That is unfortunate, although “gutted” seems a bit strong given the increase you quoted, which is relatively mild all things considered, especially given that these are flights from the US to Africa. Of course if you had 280k miles but not 320k that’s a big problem still, and pretty unlucky timing. But many devaluations are much worse than this.

Yep. Effing nutz. VS is the same. The party is ending. Any airline pricing a J class award seat at over 100k is flying with empty seats.

I’m never going back to SFO so I will be just fine.

Wow, I am incredibly shocked that there is a no notice devaluation right after a transfer bonus. It's almost as if they planned it or something.

Is it just me or the taxes & fees charged have gone up 4x? Used to be $200-300 per pax, now it's ~$800.

I just checked both SFO-CDG and SFO-AMS. J taxes and fees are ~$800 per pax, used to be $~200.

Promo awards have gone up by 25 to 33%:
Within-Europe flights that used to cost 5,625 are now 7,500 (33.3% more)
Cross-Atlantic flights costing 15,000 are now 18,750 (25% more).
At the same time purchasing miles is costing more cash.