Watch Out For New Delta, Air France & KLM Transatlantic Fares With No Checked Luggage Allowance

Delta, Air France and KLM have introduced new fares that have no checked luggage allowance for transatlantic travel.

The new fare families have been introduced for select counties and will be rolled out for all of Europe by February 2018.

The new fares are available for purchase for travel from April 10, 2018 between United States, Canada, France, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The fares will be available for sale in all other European countries starting February 2018.

There are three different fare types:

– Light for passengers with only carry on luggage

– Standard for passengers with checked luggage allowance of up to 23 kilos

– Standard + for passengers with checked luggage that require flexibility

Helsinki – San Francisco

When I was logged into my Flying Blue account, KLM was only offering Light or Standard + fares and wondered why?

Seems that even Elite members get one free checked bag on these Light fares unlike with airlines such as Lufthansa, British Airways and Air New Zealand where no BAGS means no BAGS for everyone!

Conclusion

So, the current luggage inclusive fares suddenly become Light and passengers need to pay 50 euros for checking in a bag and this effectively means 100 euro fare increase for those that need to check bag both ways.

It is interesting if all SkyTeam Elite and Elite Plus members will get checked baggage allowance even on these non-baggage inclusive fares. It would be contrary to industry trends where no bags literally means no bags even for elite members.

I haven’t had elite status with SkyTeam for few years. Just flew on Alitalia yesterday to Santiago and credited the flight to Flying Blue crossing the threshold to Gold. I believe that the account should update sometime tomorrow.