🛩️ Flying Blue Overview
Flying Blue is our favorite SkyTeam program - Here’s why.
High Value for SkyTeam It is a shared program between Air France and KLM, and has great redemption options throughout the SkyTeam Alliance - debatably the best when considering value for money.
Sale Frequency + Point Buying The points go on sale frequently and there are other ways of accummulating too, with a high-value “Flying Blue Subscription” program, to earn points on a monthly basis at a competitive price (especially when used for premium cabin redemptions).
Great Availability Even though Flying Blue award bookings have dynamic pricing, they are undoubtedly one of the best programs in the SkyTeam Alliance with great availability throughout. And it’s monthly “promo rewards”, offering 25% discount on select destinations, can at times offer incredible value on popular routes.
EARNING / BUYING / MANAGING FLYING BLUE MILES
🛩️ LINK TO | ℹ️ DESCRIPTION | 🔗 LINK |
BUY
Flying Blue Deals | Check on this blog if Flying Blue Miles are on sale. If they aren’t when you check, they typically have a good discount or bonus every 2 months or so | |
BUY
Buying Flying Blue Miles | This is the page where you can buy Flying Blue Miles from Flying Blue (Air France/KLM) - click “log in to buy miles” → select amount of points to purchase | |
BUY
Flying Blue Subscription | A unique way to increase your Flying Blue balance. The “Advanced” and “Complete” subscriptions offer great value (especially Complete) - allowing you to buy miles at a cheaper rate than any of the usual bonuses or discounts offered by Flying Blue.
Keep in mind, you get these points per month, not in a big chunk. (Log in to see options) | |
EARN
Flying Blue Shopping Portal | The Flying Blue Shopping Portal offers decent value, especially if this is your primary choice of program for points. Log in with KLM / Air France credentials and earn Flying Blue miles on a variety of purchases, from travel & experiences - to online shopping. | |
Flying Blue Promo Rewards | One of our favorite things about Flying Blue - monthly Promo Rewards on select routes, offering 25% discount on miles required for the booking. | |
Searching for Flights (step 1) | This one is simple - search directly on Airfrance or KLM’s Website. (both links →)
Sign in → select “book with miles” (next to “Book a flight”) | |
Searching for Flights (step 2) | If you’re not finding what you need straight away, next step is using seats.aero. We often start here → “Explore: Air France/KLM Flying Blue” (linked to the right)
It’s not perfect though - it doesn’t show all availability.
On to searching step 3 as a backup to check. | |
Searching for Flights (step 3) | The broader search method.
Using seats.aero again, we frequently use “Explore: Delta Skymiles” to search for all SkyTeam availability - Then cross reference that availability with Flying Blue directly on the booking websites (Airfrance or KLM). | |
Award Chart Hack | Air France & KLM use Dynamic Pricing for the Flying Blue Rewards, so it’s tricky to understand what the “actual” baseline price should be - the searching trick shared in this blog helps you figure out the best deals for any route. | |
Partner Airlines List | This is a list of all AirFrance’s Partner Airlines - these are the airlines you can book using Flying Blue Miles on Air France or KLM.
Keep in mind, not every airline is available all the time. | |
Free Stopovers with Flying Blue | You can book free stopovers through Flying Blue, but the catch is you have to call Flying Blue to make the booking. |
BOOKING WITH FLYING BLUE MILES
🛩️ LINK TO | ℹ️ DESCRIPTION | 🔗 LINK |
SEARCH
Flying Blue Promo Rewards | One of our favorite things about Flying Blue - monthly Promo Rewards on select routes, offering 25% discount on miles required for the booking. | |
SEARCH
Searching for Flights (step 1) | This one is simple - search directly on Airfrance or KLM’s Website. (both links →)
Sign in → select “book with miles” (next to “Book a flight”) | |
SEARCH
Searching for Flights (step 2) | If you’re not finding what you need straight away, next step is using seats.aero. We often start here → “Explore: Air France/KLM Flying Blue” (linked to the right)
It’s not perfect though - it doesn’t show all availability.
On to searching step 3 as a backup to check. | |
SEARCH
Searching for Flights (step 3) | The broader search method.
Using seats.aero again, we frequently use “Explore: Delta Skymiles” to search for all SkyTeam availability - Then cross reference that availability with Flying Blue directly on the booking websites (Airfrance or KLM). | |
OPTIMIZE
Free Stopovers with Flying Blue | You can book free stopovers through Flying Blue, but the catch is you have to call Flying Blue to make the booking. | |
OPTIMIZE
Award Chart Hack | Air France & KLM use Dynamic Pricing for the Flying Blue Rewards, so it’s tricky to understand what the “actual” baseline price should be - the searching trick shared in this blog helps you figure out the best deals for any route. | |
AIRLINES BOOKABLE
Partner Airlines List | This is a list of all AirFrance’s Partner Airlines - these are the airlines you can book using Flying Blue Miles on Air France or KLM.
Keep in mind, not every airline is available all the time. |
✈️ Air France / KLM Flying Blue: Your Cheat Sheet
Stacking Flying Blue miles through Earning & Buying is considerably easy:
- Flying Blue Subscription - A subscription model allowing you to buy a fixed number of points per month. The more you buy, the lower the per-point cost. “Advanced” & “Complete” plans offer good value, cheaper than Flying Blue’s usual discount/bonus: - Normal Discount/Bonus usually offers $16.75ish per 1000 points - Advanced offers 10k pts/month at $13.93 per 1,000 points - good value - Complete offers 17k pts/month at $12.77 per 1,000 points - great value The only downside with subscriptions is, you can’t buy points in bulk.
- Buying Flying Blue Miles - Flying Blue miles go on sale roughly every 2 months, typically for 45% discount or 80% Bonus. The price per 1000 points with both options is very similar. Usually around $1.65-$1.69. This isn’t great value considering the Subscription offer, but when you plan ahead you can find great redemption value even at these prices.
Availability:
- Generally Good availability for both Air France & KLM, as well as many other Sky Team members. Award seats are typically released 359 days before departure, if you book 9-12 months in advance you will find a good amount of availability, but even closer to the flight (within 4 months) we have come across a lot of availability even on busy routes.
Searching for Award Flights
- Even though Flying Blue is an option for “Explore” on seats.aero, it doesn’t always show all availability. So one workaround we have used is to search “Explore → Delta Skymiles” to find SkyTeam availability, and then cross referenced on the booking page on Airfrance or KLM website directly when confirming search results. This is a great way to narrow down a search instead of checking daily.
- The availability to cost ratio is really great with Flying Blue - so it might not always have the cheapest redemptions, or the most availability, but it usually has good availability, often at good prices.
Competitive Prices
- Despite pricing awards dynamically (as opposed to regional or distance based award charts), Flying Blue often offers some of the best prices through SkyTeam for Premium cabin redemptions.
- This is further strengthened with their monthly “Promo Rewards” - where each month a selection of destinations are “on sale”, offering a 25% discount on points required to make an award redemption.
- For travel to/from and within Europe, Flying Blue is definitely one of the top contenders for the best network with best redemption options throughout.
- Taxes and Fees can occasionally be very high. In most cases when booking long haul departing from France, fees can be $400+
Points Sale Frequency + Buying Points
💸 Normal Price for Flying Blue Miles = $0.0305 per point
🗓️ Sale Frequency: Flying Blue usually has a decent discount or bonus every 2 months
🤑 Best Recent Deal: Best deal in the past year = 45% Discount ($16.77 per 1000 points)
🔁 Subscription: The cost per 1000 points when subscribing to the “complete” option is really great, at $12.77 per 1000 points. So we only buy Flying Blue miles when we know how we are going to use them.
BUYING POINTS:
✅ When to Buy: When cost per 1000 pts is $16.76 - but only when we know how we plan on using them, and have calculated the value we will be able to redeem.
❌ When NOT to buy: When cost per 1000pts is ≥ $16.76 we recommend waiting for a better deal.
ℹ️ Nuance: We only consider buying Flying Blue Miles when we know how we plan on using them, and have calculated the value we will be able to redeem. We do not recommend buying Flying Blue Miles speculatively.
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