Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus Award Chart Devaluation

By: Ben Schlappig

Published: June 18, 2014

22 comments

I’m a big fan of Thai Airways. I love their first class experience, how much award space they release, and the fact that every flight with them is a lottery as far as aircraft type goes (they love substituting planes at the last minute).

Thai_Airways_First_Class_A38001
Thai Airways A380 first class

Nowadays it can make sense to credit miles to foreign airline frequent flyer programs, given how many devaluations we’ve seen with US airlines. In the Star Alliance, Aegean, Air Canada, ANA, Asiana, and Turkish all offer fairly lucrative programs, just to name a few. Which program makes the most sense for you really depends on your redemption goals.

I can’t say I’ve ever considered crediting miles to Thai Airways’ Royal Orchid Plus program, and especially won’t consider it after today.

Thai Airways has just announced a massive devaluation to award redemptions made through their Royal Orchid Plus program, which kicks in for bookings made as of September 1, 2014.

Thai-Airways-Changes

Here are the old and new Royal Orchid Plus award charts:

How drastic are the changes? As y’all know, I like to redeem miles for international first class, and my single favorite award redemption is probably for travel between the US and Southeast Asia. While I’ve never personally redeemed miles through the Royal Orchid Plus program, I was curious how much my favorite award went up in cost.

I looked at the award chart, and the cost for rondtrip first class award travel between “Asia 1” (which includes Thailand) and North America is currently 264,000 miles.

So then I looked at the new award chart, which kicks in a couple of months from now. For travel between “Asia 1” and North America it listed a cost of 264,000 miles. See, this devaluation can’t be that bad if they’re not raising the cost of my favorite award… right? 😉

And then I read the terms and realized that they switched the award chart from displaying roundtrip costs to displaying one-way costs. That means the cost of a first class redemption between Asia and North America went up by 100%!

That’s not the only region, either. The cost for business class travel between “Asia” 1 and Europe went from 144,000 miles roundtrip to 144,000 miles one-way. First class in the same region went from 207,000 miles roundtrip to 207,000 miles one-way.

Ouch, ouch, ouch. And we thought the Hilton and United devaluations were bad…

Bottom line on Thai Royal Orchid Plus changes

While I appreciate that they’re giving advance notice here, I think Thai has completely lost it with these changes:

I can’t imagine they have anywhere close to as many frequent flyer program members or redemptions as the major US airlines or even the “top” Asian airlines, so I highly doubt they were dealing with more redemptions than they could handle
If we’re being honest, their product isn’t really competitive with the top Asian airlines, so you’d think they wouldn’t want to make their program substantially worse than the competition, to give people even less of an incentive to fly with them

Just wow…

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Max Guest

August 21, 2015, 7:05 pm

I often fly Thai and I have enrolled onto the Royal Orchid plus frequent flyer program. The frequent flyer program is brilliant as I used to fly Thai as a child now I have enough miles for an upgrade to business class for a long haul flight! Now there have been changes in the system but it's still good. And where this review is wrong is where it says Thais product is not competitive to as Asias "top" airlines. Well Thai is actually Asias top airline and for about 20 years was the worlds best airline. It has fallen but it is still one of the "top" airlines like it or not. I would like the author of this review to watch the rise of Thai Airways to unfold over the next couple of years.

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Jon Guest

June 9, 2015, 2:06 pm

Pardon the late post, but wouldn't Thai still be an option for travel within Thailand, especially BKK to Koh Samui which has artificially high prices? United has limited availability to travel from BKK to USM from what I'm seeing and I'm hoping that at 15k RT, this will be a reasonable alternative.

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Mitchell Stein Guest

July 1, 2014, 9:43 pm

I'm writing from the U.S. No wonder Thai continues to lose money, market share, and customer loyalty. Count me as a former Thai flyer. Their annoying expiration rules were bad enough. So were the non-existing promotions to actually make us want to choose Thai versus anyone else. My ROP award miles are virtually worthless now. This dramatic devaluation of our miles will further send TG into the toilet. Who do they think they're kidding? After well publicized declines in service both on the aircraft and from the call centers, which now borders on disdainful, and outdated equipment and after completely abandoning the U.S. market (remember the A340-500 nonstops? Long gone), this insulting slap in the face to ROP members is the last straw. I'll use my Star Alliance and One World miles as fast as I can, and if I'm going to pay for a trip, it won't be on Thai.

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Mark Guest

June 18, 2014, 10:33 pm

Bill, I have a comment on your statement below: "This is the new era. Everyone had better adjust to it, because it isn’t likely to change any time soon." We had better adjust to it? Bill, most of us cannot "adjust to it" because we are not even allowed to play the game. The insane credit card offers, and points earning possibilities that exist for U.S.-based people are in a whole different universe from that which most of us live in. Those insane credit card offers to not exist in Canada or Asia; not even big spenders can accumulate with ease the sickening number of miles that people in the U.S. can, by "adjusting to" and playing this new game. Bill, please tell your "insider" buddies to move their butts and prod the banks and card companies around the world to make points earning as lucrative for the rest of us, as it is for U.S.-based people, because at them moment, we quite frankly feel shut of the game, which makes their award chart devaluations a more intense, repeated kick in the ball sack.

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Ivan Y Diamond

June 18, 2014, 9:02 pm

I bet UA is now feeling like good guys compared to what TG did (sky high increases)and what AA/US did without any notice. Not that they should - it's just that it could always be worse.

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