UPDATE Thu Dec 26 5:00pm MT: Ben Lipsey, the director of Air France KLM Flying Blue has posted on FlyerTalk that they are not increasing the amount of miles required for partner award flights, the increase that was seen for roughly 36 hours or so was a temporary measure put in place to correct the mistake fares that were available on Christmas Eve:
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.
UPDATE Thu Dec 26 3:30pm MT: It now looks like some of the increases are being reversed as I am seeing rewards between Calgary and Edmonton for 5,000 miles as well as Calgary to Vancouver for 6,000 miles.
That little blip from Flying Blue with discounted pricing on short haul partner reward flights that we let you know about on Christmas Eve was just that – a blip. It appears it may have been part of where the program was updating their system to adjust reward requiements on partner airlines, for the worse. As quickly noted in our post on Christmas Day, all of a sudden Flying Blue was charging 10,000 miles or more for those one way short haul flights:
Over the past few years we’ve occasionally highlighted how you can use Air France KLM Flying Blue Miles for reward flights on WestJet and how they were reasonably priced and depending on distance you could redeem 5,000, 6,000, 7,500, or 12,500 miles for a one way flight.
That all changed on Christmas Day where it appears that reward flights on all Flying Blue partners (not just WestJet) have had their mileage requirements increased by up to 100%.
Here are some examples of the new reward pricing on WestJet:
Calgary to Edmonton
Old mileage requirement: 5,000 miles one way
New mileage requirement: 10,000 miles one way
Calgary to Vancouver
Old mileage requirement: 6,000 miles one way
New mileage requirement: 10,000 miles one way
Toronto to Montreal
Old mileage requirement: 5,000 miles one way
New mileage requirement: 10,000 miles one way
Toronto to Calgary
Old mileage requirement: 12,500 miles one way (or was it 15,000 miles? My memory is failing me this Boxing Day morning)
New mileage requirement: 16,500 miles one way
Winnipeg to Calgary
Old mileage requirement: 7,500 miles one way
New mileage requirement: 10,500 miles one way
Wrapping it up
This year’s Christmas present from Air France KLM Flying Blue wasn’t a very good one. more like a lump of coal in a stocking. And as Christmas presents are meant to be a surprise, these changes came as a surprise since there was no advance notice.
At least, for the time being, Flying Blue have not adjusted the reward requirements for travel on their own metal for flights across the Atlantic. These best in market redemption options (As long as you don’t need a connecting flight on WestJet or other partner airline) remain at 20,000 for economy class, 35,000 for premium economy and 50,000 for business class (all one way) and of course they can end up being even less with their Promo Rewards offers.
Originally posted on December 26, 2024 @ 8:58 am