Air France La Premiere awards will get even harder to book

[Mattg]

Air France's First Class (La Premiere) is already one of the hardest frequent flyer redemptions there is. These seats are restricted to Flying Blue members who have status in the program.

From 2023, La Premiere redemptions will be further restricted to Flying Blue Platinum & Ultimate members, and a maximum of one F award seat will be made available per flight.

Air France La Premiere Access Limited To Flying Blue Platinum & Ultimate Members Effective January 1, 2023

Air France La Premiere award access is more restrictive come January 1, 2023.

loyaltylobby.com

 

[levelnine]

From every review I've seen, it appears to be one of the best first class products in the world, so I'm not surprised that demand outstrips supply.

And the restriction to elite members makes sense given that Flying Blue is a transfer partner of all the major US credit cards, so you did have the situation of Americans who had never flown AirFrance transferring their millions of Amex/Chase/Capital One/Citi points into the program to snag the best seats on the plane.

I always find it a little wild when Americans are able to swoop in and redeem Qantas F seats between Australia & the US for a mere 70K AS miles while Australians are generally stuck paying over 160K QF. Qantas try to make it a little more palatable by giving preferential access to award seats to its own elites. Same with SQ, EK, etc etc.