Flying Blue’s Christmas miracle: Ecstasy, agony, regularity

Air France-KLM Flying Blue, as you might already know, does not have a fixed award chart. Instead, it prices all awards dynamically. 

At times, this can lead to some rather ridiculous award prices, like 533,000 miles for a one-way Business Class ticket between Singapore and Paris. But other times, the ridiculousness can work in your favour— as some of us discovered over the past couple of days, when short-haul award costs were slashed, then hiked, then finally restored to their original levels.

Flying Blue’s Christmas adventures

For context, Flying Blue normally charges 5,000 miles in Economy and 15,000 miles in Business on ultra short-haul routes, such as Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. 

However, on Christmas day I learned from the blog comments (H/T cookies) that award costs had come down significantly. I don’t know exactly when this began — some say it had been this way for at least a week, just flying under the radar — but it was quite the steal.

While the search results would still display the regular pricing, clicking on the fares reduced the cost to just 2,000 miles in Economy and 5,000 miles in Business!

If you ever needed an excuse to do a oneworld lounge safari, this would be it. For just 5,000 miles and ~S$80 in taxes and surcharges, you could book an evening Malaysia Airlines departure, take advantage of early check-in, and spend the day enjoying:

• A la carte breakfast at Qatar Premium Lounge (T1)
• Dim sum and noodles lunch at Cathay Pacific Lounge (T4)
• Afternoon tea and work session at British Airways Lounge (T1)
• Pre-dinner snacks and cocktails at Qantas Business Lounge (T1)
• Shower and a la carte dinner at Qatar Premium Lounge (T1)

And of course, if you were already a oneworld Sapphire or Emerald member, you could book the Economy ticket and enjoy all of the above (plus the Qantas First Lounge, for Emeralds), except the Qatar Premium Lounge (which is for First or Business Class passengers only).

It wasn’t just this route that went on “sale”; Frequent Miler spotted that short-haul Delta flights were pricing at just 1,500 miles in Economy, or 4,000 miles in First, so it appeared to be a system-wide glitch.

And while I’m sure there were plenty of us in Singapore eagerly snapping up MH Business Class awards, it probably paled in comparison to the volume of Delta bookings, so once the feeding frenzy in the US started it was only a matter of time. 

Later in the day, short-haul award prices were hiked significantly. The minimum cost of any award was increased to 10,000 miles, so Singapore to Kuala Lumpur now priced at 10,000 miles in Economy, and 20,000 miles in Business. Compared to the baseline, that would represent a 100% price hike for Economy!

FlyerTalk had a meltdown, blog posts were written about a “Christmas massacre”, but this morning, a sense of calm has returned as those devaluations started getting rolled back.

Ben Lipsey, Head of Flying Blue, has now gone on FlyerTalk to clarify what happened.

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.

Long story short, Flying Blue had a pricing glitch, the temporary fix made it seem like a devaluation had taken place, and now we’re back to pre-Christmas levels. 

Here’s a sampling of what you can expect to pay for short-haul awards now.

Truth be told, even at the regular pricing, the value for Economy Class tickets can be quite attractive, especially if the dates in question have higher than average pricing. 

Will the error fares be honored?

This brings us to the other question: will tickets booked under the error prices be honoured?

At this point, there’s no official word. I’ve seen a few data points of people successfully flying their tickets, so at this point all we can do is wait and see.

I personally booked a couple of trips to Kuala Lumpur, plus a WestJet flight between Calgary and Seattle, and all the reservations are still showing up just fine on the respective websites.

Anyway, it would be tricky for Flying Blue to make an argument that the prices are obvious errors. That’s the thing about dynamic pricing— it cuts both ways. If you don’t want to have an award chart, you can’t expect members to know what the “right” prices are!

Conclusion

Air France-KLM Flying Blue had quite an eventful Christmas, with short-haul awards going on “sale”, getting devalued, and restored to normal within the space of 48 hours.

Pricing glitches can happen to any programme, of course, but they’re much more likely to occur with dynamic pricing because of the vagaries and complexities involved. It’s swings and roundabouts; sometimes you’ll tear out your hair, sometimes you’ll snag a great deal (assuming it’s honoured).

If you saw my heads up in MileLion Roars (subscribe so you don’t miss the next one!) and managed to snag some tickets, congrats! Take it as a little Christmas gift. Hopefully, this will give you an opportunity to visit the excellent oneworld lounges at Changi Airport, as well as Malaysia Airlines’ flagship lounge in Kuala Lumpur.