A trick for viewing the Flying Blue award calendar (Air France not working)

17

Update 2/2/24: As we reported in this morning’s post about Flying Blue Promo Rewards, the Flying Blue calendar trick noted below isn’t currently showing award pricing on Air France’s website (although it will show cash prices). It still works on KLM.com, so hopefully this is just a temporary glitch on the Air France side.

~~original post follows

Air France / KLM Flying Blue miles are super easy to get. You can transfer 1 to 1 from any major transferable points currency: Amex, Capital One, Chase, Citi, Bilt, or even Brex.  Even better, you’ll often find transfer bonuses. If you then sprinkle in the fact that Air France / KLM often has excellent award prices, you get an incredibly useful combo…except for one thing: low cost awards can be hard to find. Luckily, there’s a great trick to make it easy.

a person typing on a computer

Flying Blue award searches used to automatically show a full month of results at a time, but in recent years that calendar appeared to have been discontinued.  Fortunately, there’s a super easy way to see the award calendar: don’t enter dates into the search screen (Hat Tip PhatMiles).

Step 1: Enter Search Criteria w/out Dates

a screenshot of a phone

Go to airfrance.us or klm.com and log into your Flying Blue account (create one if you don’t already have one).  Click “Book with Miles” and enter your search criteria as shown above.  Don’t enter dates.

Then click “Search Flights.”

Step 2: View Monthly Calendar

a screenshot of a calendar

By leaving out dates from your search criteria, results should appear on a monthly calendar as shown above.

Bonus Tip: If you drill down to a specific date and then want to quickly return to calendar view, in the URL you can simply change the word “offers” to “open-dates”.

Calendar Issues

The calendar view can be very helpful for finding saver level awards on Air France (and maybe KLM), but it’s not perfect.  Here are some issues I’ve come across:

  1. Air France / KLM Only: It doesn’t show award pricing for other airlines.  For example, there may be award availability on Delta and/or Virgin Atlantic which can be booked with Flying Blue miles, but the calendar won’t show it.
  2. Results don’t always match class of service: In one search for business class awards, I saw a day that appeared to have business class award availability for the saver price of 50,000 points (which is reasonable), but when I clicked on the date, that option didn’t show.  I finally checked economy pricing and found the option there.
  3. When trying to edit the initial search criteria, I sometimes run into a “forever hourglass”. Basically the system is stuck until I fully log out, close out my browsers, and try again later or try again with a different browser instance.

Despite all of the above issues, this can be a very helpful tool for finding Air France / KLM award availability.  Good luck!

Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

17 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments