I was always taught to judge people by their actions, instead of their words. Real life has shown me that talk is cheap, but that actions generally show how devoted people really are to them. The same goes for companies: they will always tell you that you are a valued customer, until they really have to do something to show it.

I am a very frequent corporate flyer and most airlines say they love corporate travellers. Some obscure higher powers in our organization frequently put me in a plane to some vague destination. One way airlines show their love is by frequent flyer programs. Over the years I have flown most decent airlines, so I am a long-time owner of a frequent flyer card for every airline alliance. To me it is a minor compensation for being folded in a small chair without decent service in a noisy aircraft.

6 years ago, when the airline industry was in a bit of a downturn, I got a letter from KLM. They informed me that they loved the business traveller and even understood business travellers sometimes not flying with them for a long time even though they loved to fly KLM. Cost is a factor, but also routes and timing. And as a business traveller you can not always find a good KLM flight to your destination. To recognize that fact, the frequent flyer miles would last indefinetly. I really liked them for that one.

In fact, their analysis back then was quite a good one. My frequent route to our headquarter in Oslo is a good example. KLM, SAS and Norwegian competed on that route for quite a long time. When flying for business, choosing the flight becomes a business decission: who has the cheapest solution for fitting in with our meetings. To be honest, KLM did not provide a good solution at all since they departed too early and genrally are four times more expensive than Norwegian (or Sterling before that) and twice the price of SAS. I flew up and down to Bristol on a regular basis when I worked for Boeing, and generally we flew EasyJet because they did have decent departure times at an acceptable price. In business travel, preference for a specific airline comes into play when difference with competitors are marginal. The good old days where you could say "I will only fly KLM" are gone, business will never allow it because it will cut into the bottom line.

Today I found out that KLM has changed its frequent flyer program overnight. In fact, they did so three months ago and now people started to find out their points were gone. They didn't bother tell anybody, but luckily some newspapers picked up on it. Apperantly, they have reduced the validity of your membership again: if you don't fly with them within 20 months, you will lose all your points. It annoyed a lot of people: many people who fly for business might end up on a "non-KLM" route for a number of reasons. But also those who go on holliday with them once a year, now can't afford to skip a single year because they would lose their points.

Also they increased the number of points you need for a trip by 50%. Not that that mattered much to most people, since the single biggest complaint is that you never seemed to be allowed to use the points for flights anyway. Somehow the flight was always full or did not qualify for spending frequent flyer miles.

Personally, I would lose about 70.000 points in the comming 3 months. It used to be enough to fly up and down to Seattle twice. Now, I can hardly make it once. Many people already lost all their points. We are not talking the occasional flight of a holliday maker, we are talking frequent flyers which used to have platinum cards but have been out of the game for a year or two due to work or private circumstances (like pregnancy). Or people like me, who simply found out that paying 400 euro for that cup of coffee and a cheap sandwich is a difficult business decission to defend. But on the other hand, I did have projects that made me fly four times a week with KLM for months at a time.

I don't know what they were thinking at KLM. Do they really think that threatning/taking people's points away would make them more likely to fly KLM? That people would think "Oh my, I haven't flown KLM in 20 months and now they want me to fly to keep my points, let's do that". Most peoples reaction is the opposite: they feel they are taken hostage by their airline. That their hard-earned flights, which you could never collect anyway, are taken away from them.

To me, KLM is hopelessly stuck in the past where people would blindly buy KLM flights, regardless of cost. The new reality is that flying has become a commodity market and the best business deal wins on a case-by-case basis. And to be honest, the KLM prices are ridiculous, so they do lose a lot of business. Taking away people's frequent flyer miles certainly does not help this situation. I hope I can use my points, or transfer them to another program quickly, because KLM has become less and less interesting to me as a traveller. Not because of the lack of points, but due to the lack of respect for me as a business traveller and the decissions I have to make.

Jaap van Ekris
in Life on the road
Posted at 08:24:08 UTC