Malaysia Airlines has announced that it will be making changes to various Enrich redemption tables as from June 10. Some of the changes are driven by a change in their reservation system being made on that day. Having said that, it looks as though they are taking the opportunity to make changes to redemption rates at the same time.
There is an FAQ on the changes that has been published here. It is when you compare the tables in the FAQ to the existing tables, you begin to realise the significant changes that are being made. Indeed, there seems to be quite a significant devaluation of the overall program in these changes.
There are some pretty signiificant changes being made across the board. Some of the effects of the change won’t be known until June 10. We will update this post as more information comes to hand.
Enrich Redemption Changes
Broadly, the changes are as follows
- Awards will be based on dynamic pricing, rather than using fixed Award tables,
- Surcharges will now be included in the points cost, rather than as a separate cash payment
- Changes to Upgrade Rates, which will generally become more expenisve
- Adjustments to partner award rates, which will also become more expensive
- Removal of companion awards
Moving redemptions to dynamic pricing
The biggest change is the removal of fixed award tables for redemptions. In its place will be a dynamic model, which will be based on the fare price of a revenue ticket. As a result, award prices will be affected by the usual factors such as seasonality and passenger demand.
Effectively, you will be able to redeem on the commercial fares that are made available. There are some exceptions – you will not be able to redeem booking classes Q,O,G or Z. Z is a promotional business fare, while Q,O and G are discounted Economy Fares
In addition to the above change, there will no longer be a cash fuel surcharge. Any such surcharge will be paid for in the points quoted for a particular award.
The thing that will be of interest to most people is how this will actuall affect them. Unfortunately, it is hard to say at the moment. Enrich have given some examples as shown below.
Of course, in creating this chart, Malaysia Airlines have been able to pick and choose the exact flights. We will need to wait and see what the ‘real world’ effect of these changes are.
Changes to Upgrade Rates
Under the new upgrade charts, fares booked in ‘S’ and ‘N’ will no longer be eligible to upgrade. In some cases, there are quite significant increases in the number of points that are required ot upgrade. In particular, the more deeply discounted rates have some steep increases.
Adjustments to partner award rates
There are some quite signifcant changes being made to the award tables for one world and parter awards. Some of the changes will result in some quite siginificant increases in the number of points required.
The following table shows the number of points required for a parther award (where there is no MH flight).
Compare the existing chart
To give an idea of the effect of this, consider a redemption between Australia an Europe on a partner airline. The changes are show a one way business trip rising from 87,000 to 165,000 points. A return trip goes from 174,000 to 254,000.
Removal of companion awards
Companion awards were an award that allowed a member taking a business or first class flight the ability to book an award flight for a companion. Under the rules, the companion needed to be travelling with the member making the paid reservation.
I am not sure how much this particular award was used, so cannot comment on how much of a loss it is. It may well be that this fucntionality is not supported in the new reservation system.
On the surface, the changes look quite brutal. We will need to wait until June 10 to see some of the full detail of the changes. As further information on these changes comes to hand, we will update this post.
