Air France-KLM Flying Blue Adds Choice Benefits, Offering Bonus Miles & Status

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.

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?