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Last Monday Flying Blue (the loyalty program for Air France/KLM) announced a raft of changes to its scheme, one of which included a whole new way of attaining Flying Blue status. I covered all the details of the Flying Blue announcement earlier but, as I’ve had so many questions about the new way of earning Flying Blue status, I thought I’d address that in a little more detail.
The fact is that the way you earn Flying Blue Status isn’t as straightforward as it may appear and, each time I thought I had a handle on what the rules mean, I saw a different way they could be interpreted….so big thanks go out to irishguy28 on FlyerTalk for helping clarify a few points.
Changes To Flying Blue Status Earning
From 1 April 2018:
- Level Miles and Segments will be a thing of the past – the future is “Experience Points” (XPs for short).
- The calendar year will be mostly irrelevant as Flying Blue is moving to a rolling 12 month qualification period
How To Earn XP’s
Experience Points (XPs) are earned based on the distance of a flight and the cabin booked – this table shows exactly what I mean:
XPs are earned on all flights which would currently earn Level Miles & Segments so this includes partner airlines.
Number Of XPs Needed For Flying Blue Status
The headline numbers provided by Flying Blue are….
- Silver – 100XP
- Gold – 180XP
- Platinum – 300XP
….but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Every time you hit a new status level Flying Blue will deduct the number of XPs required for that level from your XP total with any surplus XPs rolling over….and that complicates things.
Earning Flying Blue Status
The best way to explain how things will work is to give some examples:
Example 1 – Member With No Status
Assumptions:
- Flying Blue Member has no status (Ivory)
- Flying Blue member books two roundtrip Business Class fares between Paris and New York.
The flights are a little over 3,500 miles in each direction so the member will earn 30XP in each direction per the XP earnings table above.
That will give the member 60XP after the first trip (which equates to no status at all) and 120XP (in total) after the second trip.
However……
As 100XP = Silver Status that’s the status the flyer gets awarded and, as a kind of “payment” for that status, 100XP is now deducted from the member’s XP balance.
This leaves the member with 20XP (and Silver Status)
From this point the member has 12 months in which to:
- earn a further 80XP to retain Silver Status or
- a further 160XP to hit the 180XP total needed for Gold Status.
Should the member earn the required 160XP he/she needs to reach Gold Status the number of XP needed for Gold (180) is deducted from their XP balance and the member now has a further 12 months to:
- build up their XP balance to the 180XP required to retain Gold Status or
- build up their XP balance to the 300XP needed for Platinum Status.
Should the member fail to retain Gold Status he/she drops down just one level (to Silver) in what is called a “soft landing”.
Example 2 – A Member With Gold Status
He/she could also earn a total of 300XP to earn Platinum Status.
Importantly, the member doesn’t need to earn 180XP for Gold and then a further 300XP to earn Platinum Status – he/she just needs a total of 300XP in the year to hit Platinum status.
If the member doesn’t achieve the necessary 300XP for Platinum Status but has earned over 180XP then he/she retains Gold Status.
Should the member fail to retain Gold Status he/she drops down just one level to Silver.
Example 3 – A Member With Platinum Status
A member who already has Flying Blue Platinum Status needs only to earn 300XP in his/her membership year to retain Platinum Status.
If the target of 300XP is not hit the member will drop down one status level to Gold.
How Many XPs Will You Start Off With On 1 April 2018
If you have any Level Miles and/or qualifying flights as of 31 March 2018 these will all be converted to XP at the following rate:
- 1,000 Level Miles = 5 XP or
- 1 qualifying flight = 7 XP
You will not have both miles and flights converted – Flying Blue will calculate the higher outcome and that will be what’s added to your new XP counter.
Here’s an example that’s been provided:
If you have 20,000 Level Miles & 9 qualifying flights….
20,000 Level Miles = 100 XP and 9 qualifying flights = 63 XP so you will have 100 XP added to your new status counter.
What Is Your Membership Qualification Year?
Everyone will start 2018 with a membership year-end date of 31 December 2018.
Things that will change that end date are:
- If the conversion of Level Miles & Segments to XPs on 31 March 2018 results in a change in status. Then the affected members will see their status year shift to 12 months from that date giving a year-end of 31 March 2019.
- If a member moves up a status level after 1 April 2018 then the rolling membership qualification year kicks in and the year-end date will be 12 months from when the new status was attained.
It’s worth noting that if all you do is maintain the same status from year to year then your qualification year will never change – so those who re-qualify for Platinum year in, year out, will always have a 31 December year-end date.
Bottom Line
Maybe it’s just me but it seems as if Flying Blue have made things unnecessarily complicated…and actually quite hard to hit top-tier status if you’re starting from scratch.
Still, hopefully some of the information above had help clarify how Flying Blue Status will work going forward – if there’s anything I’ve missed out or anything you’d like me to address just let me know in the comments.
It seems Flying Blue is changing its new program already: The conversion rate for status-miles on 31 March 2018 first announced – and in this article – was 1000 level miles = 5 XP. The Flying blue website now says 1000 level miles = 4 XP. Not a good news if confirmed!
I’m still seeing 5XP on the “experience and explore” page which talks about the new Flying Blue – do you have a link you can share which shows the 4XP number?
Interesting! I also see 5 XP for 1000 level miles again. I was in France when I posted the comment above. Apparently the conversion rate also depends on your country of residence… I had not seen news on this so far but it seems bad luck for FB members living in France.
You can experience this with a geeky trick: in the link below replace ‘FB_Country=US’ by ‘FB_Country=FR’. Then go to the ‘experience and explore’ page. There it is…
When trying for the UK or Germany (DE) I also see 1000 level miles = 5 XP. I have not checked all countries though.
https://explorefurther.flyingblue.com/?FB_Language=EN&FB_Country=US&utm_source=fbcom&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=fbreinvented&FB_Tier_Code=generic
I see what you mean…that’s very strange. I’ll see if I can find someone on Twitter to let us know what’s going on.
[…] reader Alex left a comment on my post about how Flying Blue status will be earned from 1 April 2018 saying that Flying Blue had already changed one of the details of the new program before it has […]