Flying Blue’s Elite Status (XP) Rollover Feature

While I travel a lot, I generally don’t value airline elite status as much as I used to, since the perks aren’t as generous as in the past. The one program I’ve been newly excited about is Air France-KLM Flying Blue, as I’m going for elite status with the program.

In this post I wanted to talk about the Flying Blue program’s rollover elite status feature. While Flying Blue is adding significant restrictions to its rollover elite status feature as of late 2024, it’s still much lucrative than most programs, so let’s go over all the details.

Rollover elite status is a great concept

Well-run loyalty programs should try to find ways to foster long-term loyalty with members, and to encourage incremental business.

Typically members earn elite status on an annual basis. Once you’ve qualified for elite status in a particular year, how can programs encourage a member to continue being loyal? One great idea is rollover elite status qualification, whereby any activity you earn beyond what’s required is rolled over to the following year.

This is something that we’ve seen several loyalty programs introduce over the years, though we’ve also increasingly seen them add limits to this. In some ways, I can see why — if someone just consistently way over qualifies and has status in the bag for a decade to come, that doesn’t actually do much to generate incremental business.

Anyway, in general I appreciate the idea of rollover elite qualification, especially when your travel patterns aren’t totally consistent between years. On a similar note, I think the concept of lifetime elite status also gives members a long term incentive to be loyal to an airline. It’s an area that airlines put a different amount of effort into — just look at American AAdvantage vs. United MileagePlus, for example.

Flying Blue rollover elite status (XP) basics

Before we talk about Flying Blue’s rollover elite status feature, let’s cover some of the basics of earning status with the program. Flying Blue uses “XPs” (which stands for “experience points”) as 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

However, there’s a bit more nuance to this, which also makes it easier to earn status. For example, you don’t need 580 XPs in a year to earn Platinum status:

• Once you earn 100 XPs in a year, you’ll earn Silver status
• Your status will then be reset, and you’ll need to earn 180 XPs over the next 12 months to earn Gold status
• Your status will then be reset, and you’ll need to earn 300 XPs over the next 12 months to earn Platinum status
• Maintaining status on an ongoing basis simply requires 100 XPs for Silver, 180 XPs for Gold, and 300 XPs for Platinum

With that in mind, Flying Blue offers an elite status rollover feature. In the past, this had no strings attached, though we are seeing new restrictions added. Historically, Flying Blue allowed unlimited XPs to be rolled over. That meant if you had 1,500 rollover XPs, you’d get Platinum status for the next five years, no strings attached.

However, as of November 2024, the program will start limiting rollover XPs to 300 per year. While not as generous as before, that’s still more generous than a vast majority of other programs. It means that if you earn 600 XPs in a year, you’d really earn Platinum status for two years.

What’s also nice is that Flying Blue doesn’t have a minimum number of flights you need to complete on Air France-KLM in a particular year, so you could truly maintain your status for an extra year without having to step on a plane, if you have enough rollover XPs.

Flying Blue status soft landings & lifetime status

On the topic of earning elite status with Flying Blue, it’s also worth noting two other cool features of the program, when it comes to maintaining status.

First, Flying Blue also formally offers status soft landings. That means you’ll never drop more than one status tier in a year, even without any activity:

• If you’re a Platinum member and don’t requalify, you’ll only drop down to Gold
• Even with no further activity, after a year you’ll only drop to Silver
• Then with no further activity, you’d finally lose your elite status after a further year

Lastly, Flying Blue offers lifetime Platinum status after earning Platinum for 10 consecutive years. I mention this in the context of the transition that Flying Blue is making, whereby the program is capping rollover XPs.

As of later this year, Flying Blue will cap members to a rollover of 300 XPs. However, to be fair to those who had more rollover XPs than that, the program is as a one-time courtesy giving members an extra year toward Platinum status for life for each excess 300 XPs they have.

So a lot of people will be earning Platinum for life status later this year, since Platinum status really requires earning 3,000 XPs.

Bottom line

The Flying Blue program has some unique features for earning and maintaining status. The program offers rollover XPs (the metric of earning status). While that has historically been unlimited, as of later this year, members will be capped at 300 rollover XPs per year.

Between this and the program’s soft landing and lifetime status program, I quite like the setup in terms of fostering long term loyalty. While I wouldn’t say Flying Blue is the richest program in terms of elite perks (you primarily get standard SkyTeam elite perks, plus Platinum members get access to Air France first class awards), status also isn’t that hard to earn.

What do you make of the Flying Blue rollover elite status feature?