I’ve written before about how Citi’s ThankYou rewards program has recently added airline transfer partners. See, for example: Thank you, Citi, Singapore is looking sweet. Now, they’ve added another partner: Air France – KLM Flying Blue.
While Flying Blue miles aren’t quite as useful as Singapore miles, they do have some really good uses:
- One-way flights on Delta for half the price of round trip (which Delta will have too beginning Jan 1 2015).
- Seasonal promo awards for 25% to 50% off the usual award prices.
- Award flights to Israel price as flights to Europe.
On the other hand:
- Flying Blue awards do include fuel surcharges.
- The Flying Blue online award booking tool is almost as bad as Delta’s.
Here’s a writeup of the last time I booked an award using Air France Flying Blue miles to book a Delta flight:
Instead of using Delta miles, I checked the Air France web site to see if the same awards were available there (Air France is a SkyTeam partner with Delta). Air France already allows one way awards for half the price of round trip, so I figured that was my best option. Fortunately, the flight I wanted was listed as available for only 12,500 miles. I transferred 13,000 miles from my Membership Rewards stash, then tried to book the award online. I got an error. I tried again. Another error. I called the number on the screen. I was shuffled around from person to person because my call had gone to a combined Delta, Air France, KLM call center. It took about an hour to get a guy with a French accent on the phone who could actually help me. It was painful, but he did succeed in booking the award for me.
Overall, I’m excited that Citi has continued to expand their transferable points program. More options means more chances to get more from our points and miles, and that’s a good great thing!
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Good work Citi, now work on adding British Airways too 🙂