Kenya Airways has today announced the details of its new loyalty program, named Asante Rewards (”asante” means ”thank you” in Swahili). The airline is marketing this as ”Africa’s most-awaited loyalty program,” which… is an interesting thing to market (since I can’t think of another major African airline that’s in the process of launching a program?).
Continue reading: Kenya Airways’ New Asante Rewards Loyalty Program
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Booking Kenya Airways with Flying Blue last year was easy and weird! Lots of availability and Business Class was the same redemption price as Economy (Mombasa to Nairobi): 15,000 points. Will these changes bring lower availability to partners?
They could make a killing if they turned this into like a LifeMiles style program for SkyTeam....it could be great for redeeming on MU/MF/VN/CI types, which have decent award availability and no decently priced options for redemption through SkyTeam. What if they also started selling Elite status, since only Elite+ gives lounge access, no need to worry about paying for lounge access on other carriers but I could see people buying it for the free bag on DL.
Since KQ had tieup with Blue Loyalty program by KLM/AF so will I be able to transfer those points/earnings to Asante program.....
Asante Rewards is a Loyalty program and Flying Blue is still the Frequent Flyer program used by Kenya Airways. Those two are not the same thing. This, according to Kenya Airways, themselves.
There's always a self-appointed Chief Operating Officer in the comments section. * eye roll *
I would be interested to see the award chart for intra-Africa flights. KQ can be extremely expensive (BGF-EBB one way is over 1000 USD for a 2h30 flight). And if therefore I could put my SkyTeam earnings on their program so I can redeem on Africa KQ routes.
So as a Flying Blue Elite, based in Kenya, does that mean I would need to restart the point earning journey from scratch? or would I stick to Flying Blue, and every KQ flight is credited to Flying Blue? or will they status match with Flying Blue?
In all things KQ and Kenyan, big launch with little clarity.
If you buy a kq flight to travel before October 23 will you still earn FB miles
Same situation. Can you use both? Presumably, but at this point I'd be inclined to stick with FB, particularly at the early stage of this roll out.
I did try to get an estimate on rewards tickets on the FB site just now for Intra-Africa flights (NBO-CPT) and gave an odd error message I haven't seen before, but hopefully it's not related.
I do hope KQ will still allow you to accumulate XP on FB. No XP = avoid KQ at all costs. Still, perhaps business travelers not important to them?