Flying Blue – the joint loyalty program of Air France and KLM – offers one of the best workarounds to fly Delta (and other SkyTeam partners) for fewer miles. But an unannounced Christmas Day price hike left many travelers feeling like they'd received a lump of coal. Thankfully, it was a false alarm.
Flying Blue Director Ben Lipsey took to Flyer Talk yesterday to explain they were made aware of a mistake causing some partner awards to price as low as 1,500 miles one way. Higher prices were a temporary correction to that error.
“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,” Lipsey wrote. “We will do our best to correct the airline partner pricing as soon as possible.”
Short Delta flights were hit the hardest with the temporary price increase, seeing award rate increases of up to 100% overnight while longer Delta flights (think the U.S. to Hawaii, Caribbean, and even Europe or Asia) saw far milder increases. But the damage spread to other airlines, including some flights within Mexico operated by Aeromexico that have now doubled in price. One Mile at a Time first flagged these negative changes.
To be perfectly clear: This wasn't a total bloodbath. You still could save booking Delta through Flying Blue as compared to what the airline would charge you in SkyMiles – without having to turn to Virgin Atlantic to book those same short Delta flights.
Still, devaluations like this temporary one are becoming increasingly common … and doing it around Christmas would actually fit a pattern we've seen play out before.
Over the Fourth of July this year, British Airways further axed any remaining value for using Avios to fly American and Alaska Airlines. And a few years back, Virgin Atlantic rang in the New Year by drastically raising rates to fly Delta One to far-flung destinations in Asia and Australia. Air France and KLM would have hardly been the first airlines to sneak negative changes over the holidays.
So what kind of changes were we seeing?
Before the temporary price hike, you could often book Delta's shortest flights for 6,500 Flying Blue miles one way – and thanks to Flying Blue's constantly shifting award rates, sometimes even less.
Here's a look at the higher pricing many travelers were confronted with on Christmas Day: Delta's shortest routes like Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) to Chicago-O'Hare (ORD) showed a minimum price of 10,000 miles each way – a 54% increase overnight.
Thankfully, that price has now reverted back closer to the norm. This same route now is showing 7,000 miles one way – well with in the normal price range we see with Flying Blue.
But the good news with this whole ordeal is that longer routes like this nonstop flight between Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) and Fort Myers, Florida (RSW) were spared from the changes. Before the temporary price hike, you could book this route for as few as 15,500 miles each way in economy.
The cheapest price you'll see now is 16,000 miles for the some one-way flight. That's a very modest, 500-mile increase – and again, well within the normal price range for what we're used to seeing.
The same goes for these nearly six-hour flights down to a Caribbean hotspot like Aruba (AUA). Previously, you could book this roundtrip for 36,000 miles in economy. After the Christmas Day price hike, it was showing 38,000 miles for the same roundtrip – 2,000 miles more than before. Meh.
Bottom Line
Air France and KLM's Flying Blue loyalty program left travelers with an unwanted Christmas surprise: Higher partner award pricing. But thankfully, those higher prices were just a temporary “fix” to a previous mistake.
Flying Blue's top executive recently threw water on the flames, explaining this wasn't the devaluation it seemed. Many of these short routes that were hardest hit have already reverted back to prices in range with what we are used to seeing.