As I wrote that I suspected, there was not, actually, a devaluation of partner awards by Air France KLM Flying Blue.
Many awards on partner airlines got more expensive all of a sudden. But since this came after mistake pricing for partner award travel, I suspected that these two things were related. That turns out to be correct.
- Short-distance awards on partner airlines were pricing out as low as 1,500 points each way and 4,000 miles for first class.
- Then all of a sudden the price of partner awards went up, to a new lowest price of 10,000 points in coach and 20,000 points in business class.
Program head Air France KLM Senior Vice President Ben Lipsey shares 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.
There’s no devaluation – just a temporary ‘minimum price’ applied to partner awards to prevent people from booking a mistake rate – and this will be fixed soon.
Isn’t it technically still a devaluation because LAX is San Diego and Minneapolis to Rochester were 5K miles before 10. Although I do acknowledge they were 7500 for a while before they went down to 5000.
god forbid Air France allow someone to ticket a delta short haul for $25 in their currency for which they’re paying delta $46. They could be losing $21 per transaction. The horror. Cancel Christmas.
Will I get a refund if I booked for 10k?