Unexpected platinum rewards

The price of loyalty

As a frequent traveller, I have learnt to appreciate comfort and as a creature of habit, the renewed experience of modes of travel, places of accommodation or refreshment, and services that make for the enjoyment of home away from home inadvertently enrols you into loyalty schemes.

In a bygone age, I had memberships of too many kinds of loyalty scheme, store cards, credit cards, train cards, hotel chain cards, airline loyalty schemes and obscure services that were more spam generators than you could care to be distracted by.

With time, I learnt to retain the ones with value and discard others whilst consolidating my activities with broader service providers than individual and discrete offerings.

Staying for free

When it comes to accommodation, I have kept with hotels.com and only use bookings.com if I cannot find accommodation or a good deal. For every 10 nights booked on hotels.com, I get a reward night the equivalent to the average price of the 10 nights I paid for. In six years, I have collected 52 reward nights and redeemed 40 of them saving me about £2,500 in hotel costs.

When I lived in The Netherlands for almost 13 years, KLM, then the 2003 merger Air France – KLM was my choice of airline apart from when I went on package holidays. On moving back to the UK, retaining that service has meant a stopover in either Amsterdam or Paris, a little inconvenience, but it is an outsized contribution to my loyalty points.

Platinum-plated reward

Having acquired enough Airmiles to reach Platinum last year, I was on my return from South Africa in January 55 points short of retaining my Platinum status. It would have required at least 2 business class return flights within mainland Europe to remain level par by the end of May.

I remember, just 3 years ago, I was only 30 points short of Platinum moving up from Gold, but never go to make it up. The Airmiles programme is called Flying Blue and though we get miles for distance travelled in relation to the class of travel, the measurement for traversing statuses which were based on the number of flights has changed to XP or eXperience Points.

So, imagine my glee when because of the Coronavirus pandemic I received an email from the Flying Blue programme that the XP threshold required to maintain our status by the end of the qualifying period had been reduced by 25%. As my qualifying period runs until the end of May, my already earned XP was enough to retain Platinum. [Flying Blue]

Thank you!

South Africa: If only you knew how we roll

Travelling well

My friends and some I have travelled together with know that when it comes to travel arrangements, I leave nothing to chance. The comfort of travel is just as important as the destination. As I leave my home, I expect things to be just so at the very least, I expect standards, high standards and will not flinch at demanding them.

For my return after a month in Cape Town, I ran the gauntlet of things out of kilter with the arrangements I had made. My return leg was Cape Town – Johannesburg – Paris – Manchester. For the over 12 years I lived in the Netherlands, I have retained my loyalty with KLM – AirFrance, a slight inconvenience of stopping over in Paris or Amsterdam, but it redounds to the loyalty scheme, I can bear it.

It’s easy, not really

However KLM – AirFrance do not run domestic routes in South Africa if you do not fly directly to Cape Town from Paris or Amsterdam, your stopover in Johannesburg requires you retrieve your luggage and use partners they have agreements with to complete the final leg, it is neither a codeshare nor alliance situation, just an arrangement.

I could not check-in for my return flight because the KLM – AirFrance app redirected me to Kulula, the booking reference was invalid. I had to visit the airport to have this fixed, they could only make arrangements as far as Johannesburg and that was the beginning of my ordeal. [kulula is not a separate company, but is a trading name of Comair, which also operates flights as a franchisee of British Airways.

I have much baggage

When I arrived at the airport for my trip, I found out that my queue-jumping access was not valid for check-in, only after security. At the counter, the agent then came up with all sorts of rules, Kulula only allows one checked-in baggage for the hold and one as carry-on.

I was having none of it, the printout from the Kulula sale offices the day before already indicated I could check-in two pieces of luggage. The KLM – AirFrance app said as much too, for all legs. In fact, it would be risible to have a situation where at the point of embarkation you had less checked-in luggage than when you were in transit.

A bit of back and forth with some senior official who said the rules at the airport in our conversation took precedence over the contract to carry my luggage on my ticket. I was about to relent, it would have been easier to storm off to a KLM – AirFrance counter and have this trashed out. I shouldn’t be having that conversation, it should be between the airlines.

Flights of fancy

Eventually, as the preponderance of evidence and facts weighed heavily on the situation, the official instructed the counter clerk to check-in all my baggage as long as each individual item did not weigh more than 23kg. I was scooting it at 22.8kg and 22.2kg.

I made it through security before seeing off Brian on his earlier and on schedule flight to Johannesburg. Soon, it was time to board my flight but something was wrong, there was no aircraft at the gangway of the proposed gate. I was the only one with queue-jumper status, it meant little in the end.

Our flight was going to be delayed 30 minutes before we were told the boarding gate had changed. On arrival at the new boarding gate, more tales and fantastic stories before were told there was a fault with the plane and it had been taxied off to a hanger. I guess we knew something was on.

Terminal déjà vu

Then, the plane was cancelled and we had to board a bus to arrivals terminal where we were to retrieve our baggage, go up to the sales desk for us to be shunted onto other airlines and then the check-in process, security and all that. In all my years of travel, I have never experienced this, and the way the Kulula staff informed us and handled the situation could be better. They’ll score a 6 out of 10.

Anyway, there were some really helpful staff before a good number on that Kulula flight had connecting flights from Johannesburg, we were anxious but calm. One exception was a lady shouting at the staff, it was out of their control and it did her no favours, she was obstreperous and demanding, irksome to say the least.

How we roll

I was booked on a BA flight, run by ComAir Limited in South Africa, I haven’t flown BA since March 2000 just before the DotCom crash. I was allocated a seat when I checked in my luggage, but by the time I presented my ticket to board the plane after security, I had been upgraded to business class. The obstreperous woman thought she was losing out on favours questioning why some of us were in business class. Woman, you don’t know how we roll.

She never got upgraded and she probably stewed through the flight to Johannesburg. We arrived in Johannesburg about 2 hours behind schedule, had some time with Brian before I was on my way back home.

Thought Picnic: It's an Airfares scam, at best

Robbed blind

A few weeks ago, I visited London flying in from Amsterdam. When I looked at the pricing structure that added up to the total cost for that ticket, I decided it was important that a documentation is made of the different tariffs to indicate what a travesty the charade of airfare pricing had become.

Beyond explanation

The figures above were the breakdown sent to me in the confirmation email for my flight, they appear to speak for themselves and there are the many questions that you will find yourself asking on observation.

For instance, the cost of the flight itself is less than 50% of the total cost, why do the add-ons exceed the primary or principal cost?

It becomes daunting when you realise as in the fourth column; a comparison to the cost of the flight itself. I have to pay a Carrier-imposed international surcharge which as you can see is over a quarter of the total cost and by comparison almost two-thirds of the amount I am paying for the flight.

Indeed, it is a black box

KLM offers a lengthy but rather vague explanation of what goes into making up that number.

Due to varying costs outside the control of KLM, the carrier will impose an international surcharge per flight segment both on the outbound and return trips as well as any intermediate flights. The range of the surcharge amounts may vary according to your itinerary. Complete details on applicable carrier imposed international surcharge per itinerary can be found on the klm.us booking tool, at the bottom of the 'Flight Overview' page where the total fare is given.

No, I am none the wiser as to why I have to pay this surcharge which is literally an indeterminate tax composed of costs outside the control of KLM as if the four other charges and the duty are not also outside the control of KLM apart from the booking fee.

For a long time, I have tried to understand the inscrutable conundrum of airfare costs and I must say it was better when you were clearly able to see the fuel surcharge and other atrocious rip-offs that set the aircraft industry out as an outlier to every concept of common-sense.

Air brigandage

Maybe I should spare a thought for those leaving a USA airport because by the time you have reviewed every element of fees, taxes and charges in addition to the ones we get fleeced off in Europe – those who feared the highwaymen of old would have been visited by the mile-high bandits of the Wild West of Europe across the pond.

According to that KLM website, the following types of fees are charged when leaving a USA airport:

• US international transportation tax
• US INS user fee
• US customs user fee
• US APHIS fee
• USA passenger facility charge
• USA passenger civil aviation security service fee

How do they get away with this?

Sun shines hard in Gran Canaria

Scheduled child seating

After the dreadful cold of the last few months, I have embarked on another sanity retention and enhancement escapade, I am back in Gran Canaria where the mercury is rising to the point that I could do a cold shower without a shiver.

Arkefly could not guarantee flights for the times I wanted to travel so I decided to ditch unreliable charter arrangements and go for a schedule flight with a stop-over in Barcelona on the way out and one at Madrid on the return in 15 days time.

I could not believe my amazing luck, for the third time in succession, I had another child behind me, there wasn’t too much crying but tantrums a-plenty as she kicked out so repetitively, I thought I was being mugged taking a massage in a Turkish bath.

I endured but not with any sleep, my co-passenger sympathised saying it would only be a 2-hour flight and it would all be over – almost over for the child I thought silently.

On transfer

The transfer desks in Barcelona are a mystery, you see big signs leading to Transfer Information and the it stops, you look back and you know it is somewhere in the middle.

When I finally found the desks, they were completely inconspicuous, the information desk was as good as asking for directions and being told to go North when you should be going West.

Switching from AirFrance-KLM to Air Europa was quite an insight, the service was definitely notches higher than Franco-Dutch fare, in fact, the food in comparison was the difference between cut-price dog food which needed water to reconstitute it for eating and gourmet Pedigree Chum – I woofed it all down, more or less.

It is a bit humid, I think I should saunter down to the pool and find out if my ankles are light enough for my first swim or sinking.

Another dreadful in-flight toddler

Crying from heights

What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve to deserve this? (Lyrics)

Second time already, I get on the plane with a well-heeled family that takes a row or two of premium priced seats only for me to suffer the squealing, bawling and crying of some distressed toddler.

On the way to Berlin a few weeks ago, I suspected the parents needed more than just a manual on child succouring and then I realised the child might have been seriously distressed because of the pressurisation of cabins when at cruising height.

Some smarter parents advised the child be given a dummy, the sucking action might then equalise the pressure in the inner ear and hence pacify the baby enough to make it quiet.

Methinks the cabin crew should have additional instructions on how to manage babies and toddlers.

Once again

I could not believe my luck again with my short trip to Manchester when the baby was strapped into a FAA-certified baby seat behind me such that I could not recline and the 15 minutes into the flight, the banshee was let loose and could not be contained.

My ears were assaulted with the cacophony much as my back bore the brunt of a restless toddler kicking out at the back of my seat.

Not having kids of my own and having paid rip-off prices for what is just a jumped up Economy Class seat masquerading as Business Class – that is what you get with AirFrance-KLM I was within my rights either to remonstrate to the parents or the air steward to sort this nonsense out.

We endured about 30 minutes of this noise till the toddler grew too tired that it could hardly whimper and it fell asleep.

Just cooler than freezing

Just as I wondered how I’m gonna get through we approached Manchester all the hills from West Yorkshire white-out with snow and frost – I could have been North of the Arctic Circle as the captain told us the good news that the temperature was no more -2 Celsius but now a higher -1 Celcius – and it is April – makes you wonder about global warming.

Next time I get on a plane, I would be as ready as a Pet Shop Boy – a muzzle to shut the runts up or better still a good horse tranquiliser to keep the whole family comatose for the whole flight.

What have I done to deserve this?