What is the point of Airmiles or being a Gold Elite member?

[Bus429]

I have been trying to book a weekend break (flight and hotel) with KLM for a family of 4 in Munich, Athens or anywhere between Oct 25-28 but learn that there are only so many Award seats allocated to any one flight. If I look on the normal customer website there are invariably normal fare seats available.
I really would like to spend my Airmiles on my family but, frankly, KLM makes it quite difficult!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, what is the point of being a Gold Elite member or having a lot of Airmiles? No point, as far as I can see!
All marketing b*llsh*t as far as I'm concerned.:ugh:

[slim_slag]

They are capacity controlled, call up your dedicated gold line and see if they will release some seats for you, sometimes they will for golds, worth trying. Other airlines let you have a seat on any flight if they have room, but you pay more.

[Bus429]

Slim,

Tried that to no avail.

[PAXboy]

In that case Bus, their 'rewards' programme is working exactly as they want - to their best advantage. Most airlines (sweeping generalisation) changed the balance of their schemes around the year 2000, so as to be able to offer bigger rewards but - in such a way that fewer people could take them up.

I have had this problem with more than one scheme and landed up not travelling or paying for tickets and not using the FFMs - which is exactly what they want.

If you want to travel on a specific date, you have to book a looooong time in advance. If you can be flexible on dates (like retired folks often can) then you can use the FFMs much more readily. There is no such thing as a free flight. :hmm:

[Atishoo]

If its all about seat availibility then the problem may be that its our kids half term. But personally i have never gotten anywhere with airmiles , i think its a lot of very hard work for not much in return.

[slim_slag]

Strangely enough, I've seen award availability within Europe improve over the past year or so. In fact if you take BA for example, flights from LON to ATH are pretty easy to get for most of October. I can only assume additional competition from the Locos is making them provide more seats as they cannot sell them as easily now. Also, we regularly receive offers from BA giving discounts on the miles required to fly within europe.

Unfortunately, they also invite us to pay for their fuel surcharge, which must be a nice little earner for them. Seeing as we can often get a flight on another carrier for less than the fuel surcharge, and avoid London, there is zero point in taking them up on these offers. So miles are for long haul only, where using them is not impossible but tricky, if you want any flexibility. But this also depends on the route, and it's quite complicated, some destinations months out have zero availability, so the seat allocation on those must be zero. I think that's a con.

[Final 3 Greens]

I find miles most useful to buy C or J class upgrades.

[slim_slag]

Yeh, most people who study this sort of thing say you get the most value per mile if you use it to upgrade. The value they use is defined by the price the airline sells the business class seat for, less the cost of the economy seat on an upgradable fare. But these people are generally airline junkies who are in love with their particular carrier, and as we know, love makes you blind :)

I apply a different value to a business class seat, and as you might expect it's significantly lower than what the airline thinks it is, in fact it's not much more than the cheapest upgradable economy class fare. So to upgrade, for me, those miles are wasted.

You should think of that when redeeming miles.

[farmpilot]

With Virgin they are great. If you turn up, have the miles and there is a seat it's yours. Check the loads and play the system before and the chances are you will get a seat. I use my amex miles for J tickets, works nearly every time.

[flyingfemme]

Bus, try booking through Air France....same loyalty program but seems easier to use.

[strake]

So, what is the point of being a Gold Elite member or having a lot of Airmiles? No point, as far as I can see!

You are right. The only way that you will get preferential treatment is to be on the level above Gold Elite, or Gold, or Platinum or whatever the advertised top level is.
This is reserved for the most frequent fliers who probably spend over £50k per year.
BA have (or used to have) Premier and Virgin have PAMS. I'm sure other airlines have similar.

[Techman]

Ever since KLM was taken over and changed Flying Dutchman to Flying Poo, it's been a right royal pain in the ......

There are only two possible outcomes when dealing with Flying Poo. Either you just give up, or you end up being taken away by men in white coats.

Ooh, I really like this jacket but the sleeves are much too long!

[spiney]

I've not found the same problems with Flying Blue but:

1. I never use them for short-haul, only long-haul. There are plenty of cheap tickets around for European hops.

2. I always book several months ahead, always by phone, never on-line and I'm usually prepared to shuffle around a little on travel dates.

I'm a member of several frequent flyer programmes and although I haven't done a rigorous analysis of KLM I've always considered what you get in award miles compares pretty favourably with what you spend to use them... IMHO.

[rmac]

I find my miles are better used for long haul business class (myself and mrs rmac just went to Singapore on holiday J class thanks to ff miles)

Biz seats in Europe no better than Y class, and average about 30,000 miles to buy whereas 100-130,000 miles will normally buy you a beautiful flat bed for those long haul sectors.

Star Alliance is best, as they are interchangeable and there are many airlines. For example in order to get the dates we wanted for Singapore the route was as follows;

Outbound: VIE-BKK with OS and BKK-SIN with TG
Inbound: SIN-BKK with SQ BKK-MUC with TG and MUC-VIE with LH

There are many other variations.

[Final 3 Greens]

Slim

love makes you blind

Buy 2 business class tickets for £850, receive 20,000 miles.

Buy 1 cheap economy ticket for £80, upgrade using 20,000 miles.

Invoice client for 3 business tickets at a cost of £1,275, pay out £930, make profit of £345.

Now, your point was? :}

[slim_slag]

Is that ethical? Does it matter? :)

[slim_slag]

Here you go F3G, an example which might be more relevent to the vast majority of travellers who have less opportunity than you to fiddle their expenses :)

London to Cape town and back on BA during first half of Feb. All costs rounded to nearest £100, and they are approximate and used to demonstrate a point. I don't include third party charges (tax, airport charges), just what BA takes for it's operations. The BA website is also not working properly but I think my numbers are good enough.

If you buy the ticket.
WT £500
WT+ £900
CW £2700

If you use miles
WT 50k + £100. A mile is worth approx 1p
WT+ 75k + £100 A mile is worth approx 1p
CW 100k + £100 A mile is worth approx 2.5p

Now, looking at using miles to upgrade to CW, they want 25k miles + £1100 to buy an upgradable WT+ ticket. A mile is worth approx 6p.
So using the values BA assigns to the seat, an upgrade is definitely the best value use of your miles.

But..... You still have to pay them £1100. You could get on the same plane and arrive at the same time for £500 if you sat in the back. So you are paying £600 in hard cash to sit in a larger seat, have slightly better food and drink, and have lounge access at both ends.

Now, the question is, is that worth £600? I would say not, I just bought a very nice bedframe for £600 and that will last decades. Others say £600 (+25k) for a larger seat and some airline food with a £7 bottle of wine is worth it. It's up to the individual.

[Final 3 Greens]

fiddle their expenses

I don't have expenses, I work to fixed price contracts.

Is that ethical?

If one quotes a price for business travel and the client agrees it in the contract, it is both ethical and lawful to seeks ways of reducing that cost in delivering the services.

If I said I would travel business and then travelled economy, it would be less clear whether that is ethical - but I don't do that.

If by some chance the cost of the airfares rose, then I would have no recourse to recover those additional charges, which is fair enough.

[fyrefli]

Seems fair enough to me - and thanks for the tip :D

[Momo]

Final 3 Greens:

No it's not ethical. I work for a Dow 30 company and you would be permanently banned from supplying us if this was detected. We do not always ask suppliers for receipts for their air travel, but perhaps we should. If we agree to buying someone business class tickets, we expect to be invoiced at true cost.

It would also be tax fraud if declared as having been a full-price expense. You have to have actual receipts. Something the tax authorities would not accept cannot be ethical when presented to a client.

Momo

[Final 3 Greens]

Momo

You are confusing cost plus or time and materials with fixed price.

Next time please engage brain before posting.