Flying Blue, the loyalty program of Air France and KLM (among others) has just announced a new initiative for families . For once we are not talking about loyalty programs to evoke devaluations , this is excellent news.

New Flying Blue benefits for families

Now any adult can create a “family” and invite up to 7 members . He will thus be able to transfer the miles acquired by each member to his own account. Why only in this sense? Because in the other the transfer of miles already exists, subject to a commission.

What interest ? Allow miles to be accumulated on a single account in order to optimize the purchase of award tickets for the whole family.

Then the program now offers a 25% reduction on award tickets purchased for children aged 2 to 11 traveling with an adult.

Finally, adults on parental leave will have their status automatically extended.

A fairly restrictive initiative for families

All this will undoubtedly be appreciated by the public concerned even if it is not without limits.

A family is made up of a maximum of 2 adults and a maximum of 6 children . You might say logical, but this limits the notion of “relatives” used by Flying Blue, which could also correspond to friends. I also think that blended families find themselves de facto excluded and that’s a shame.

Then the program is for the exclusive benefit of the head of the family who can use everyone’s accounts and do what he wants with them. We are therefore not in a real “miles pooling” system where people come together with a common account and is not limited to the family circle.

And honestly, how many families earn enough miles to pay for tickets for the whole family?

In the end, moreover, I think that the benefits will be limited . Indeed in a family it is the parents who earn the miles, not the children a priori, and therefore the possibility for parents to offer miles to their children or offer them award tickets already exists. Apart from the expatriate families whose children make one or two long haul trips a year, I see little interest.

Spend your miles faster

Once again let’s face it: Flying Blue Family is above all an incentive to spend your miles . By being able to scrape the bottom of the drawer (in other words by taking the miles of the children), by benefiting from a reduction if one buys tickets for children, the parents are offered new possibilities of emptying their accounts of miles.

Why ?

Like all loyalty programs, Flying Blue does not like their customers to keep too many miles in their account because they constitute a debt for the program. So we have to help customers spend them quickly (or reduce their validity).

However, contrary to what one might think, COVID has not helped matters . Not only has the validity of miles been continually extended, but holders of co-branded credit cards like Amex Air France have continued to accumulate them through their daily spending. All without being able to spend them.

It is therefore good, today, for Flying Blue as for the other programs to encourage their customers to “purchase” their miles.

A new campaign for Flying Blue Family

This initiative is accompanied by a new promotional video.

Conclusion

Flying Blue Family will delight families, mainly because of the reduction offered on award tickets purchased for children.

For the rest , the device is quite restrictive and will not benefit many people. A simple system of “miles pooling” would have been much simpler and more practical.

Image: Flying Blue by Antonio Salaverry via Shutterstock