Flying Blue Partner Devaluation Rescinded

UPDATE: Flying Blue is rolling back its partner devaluation. Ben Lipsey, the Senior Vice President of Customer Loyalty at Air France-KLM who runs the Flying Blue program, posted the following message on Flyertalk:

Sorry guys, false alarm. We were made aware of some mistake fares on partners (notably 1500/4000 miles for shorthaul Y/J on DL). Being Christmas Day, we didn’t have the active resources in place to fix the root cause so we put in a temporary fix which applied a minimum price on partners. We will do our best to correct the airline partner pricing as soon as possible. Apologies for the inconvenience.

The issue stemmed from a pre-Christmas pricing glitch in which some partners were pricing as little as 1,500 miles one-way in economy class and 4,000 miles in first class. The “stop-gap” measure apparently required a pricing floor on all partner awards.

Kudos to Lipsey and Flying Blue for explaining what happened. While devaluations are fair game in any frequent flyer program, a lack of notice is not fair game. Flying Blue miles will devalue again at some future point, but let’s hope that when occurs, advance notice will be provided.

My original story is below.

As Santa brought presents to all the good children, Flying Blue delivered coal to its good frequent flyers. One of my favorite loyalty programs has ended the year on a bad note with a devaluation of partner awards, with prices rising by up to 100%.

Flying Blue Devaluation Targets Shorthaul Awards, With Partner Prices Rising By Up To 100%

As flagged on Flyertalk:

The pricing floor for partner awards has risen, such that short-haul awards that used to be 5,000 miles one-way in economy class and 10,000 miles one-way in business class are now 10,000 miles and 20,000 miles, respectively, an increase of 100%
Some examples:

Domestic Australia
Domestic Indonesia
Intra-Asia
Inra-Europe

Other award pricing has risen 5-50%
Some examples:

Delta New York – Toronto – from 7,000 miles to 10,000 miles in economy and from 18,000 miles to 20,000 miles in business class
Etihad Abu Dhabi to Seoul – from 26,000 to 28,000 in economy and from 51,500 to 55,000 in business class
EL AL London – Tel Aviv – from 25,000 to 25,500 in economy and from 50,000 to 56,000 in business class

There is one case where pricing went down: Mexico City to Cancun on Aeromexico dropped from 12,000 to 10,000 miles in economy class and from 24,000 miles to 20,000 miles in business class.

What To Make Of This Devaluation

One Mile At A Time says, “I’m sure someone will be by to yell at me shortly for not having harsher words about the devaluation… The strategy in the miles & points world is easy — you take advantage of the best opportunities when they’re available, and try to be as rational as possible with your behavior.”

Meanwhile, Loyalty Lobby was far more critical, arguing, “Why couldn’t Flying Blue and Mr. Lipsey, head of the program, give a proper advance announcement of these changes, like any respectable airline would, to allow members to use their miles with the existing rates before they are devalued? It is borderline criminal and certainly highly unethical to push through changes like this on Christmas Day, but isn’t this something we have come to expect from Air France – KLM and its Flying Blue?”

I’ll take a more middle-ground position. Yes, it is correct that devaluations are a way to keep up with points inflation, and whenever we see a deal that is worth taking, we should. But yes, Ben Lipsey, the Senior Vice President of Customer Loyalty for Flying Blue, who came to Air France-KLM from Air Canada with CEO Ben Smith, should have known better.

I’ll stop short of calling it “criminal” because that’s the agreement we make when we play the miles and points game, but it is still bad policy, poor form, and undermines respect in the program.

Lufthansa can no longer devalue its Miles & More program in Germany without 90 days of notice (thanks to a court ruling after a disgruntled frequent flyer sued over an unannounced devaluation). Maybe the same should be true for Air France-KLM as well. But I did expect better from Air France and am thankful longer-distance awards were not devalued more severely.

CONCLUSION

Flying Blue has devalued partner awards, with shorthaul prices rising by up to 100%. This is an unequivocally negative change, made even more cruel because it was rolled out on Christmas Day. Devaluations are never appreciated, but are far less of a problem themselves than the lack of notice.

How are you impacted by this latest Flying Blue devaluation?