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This week, Air France / KLM Flying Blue launched the ability to subscribe to a plan to buy miles. In most cases, we wouldn’t recommend signing up to buy miles speculatively on an ongoing basis, but it might make sense if you either use Flying Blue miles very regularly or you have an immediate use in mind. That second use case might make sense since you can subscribe and cancel at any time.
The Deal
- Air France / KLM Flying Blue has launched a Subscribe to Miles program whereby you can subscribe to buy miles monthly at the following rates:
- 2,000 miles per month for $34.20 (1.71c per mile)
- 5,000 miles per month for $79.00 (1.58c per mile)
- 10,000 miles for $146 (1.46c per mile)
- 17,000 miles for $227.80 (1.34c per mile)
- Direct link to this deal
Key Terms
- Cancel at any time
- Miles won’t expire as long as you’re subscribed
Quick Thoughts
Flying Blue doesn’t often sell miles as cheaply as the two larger packages here, so the cost per mile is attractive by comparison. That said, it’s not cheap enough that I’d want to be buying 17,000 miles per month speculatively. Flying Blue doesn’t even have award charts these days, so it’s hard to recommend buying miles in perpetuity.
However, Flying Blue does have some strong suits. For one, I’ve found them to be good for finding multiple award seats to and from Europe, especially in business class. And while business class can still be difficult to score at peak times, I generally find it easier to find saver availability or near-saver availability through Flying Blue than through many other programs. And when it comes to partner awards, they sometimes have good deals there, also. I recently found a domestic flight on Delta for just 5,000 miles one-way. Delta wanted 14,500 miles for the same flight.
If I wanted to book a flight like that, I could certainly see the potential appeal of subscribing for a month to buy 10K or 17Kmiles (depending on the number of passengers in my party). I’d probably cancel after a month though, in part because Flying Blue isn’t offering much in the way of benefits for subscribing apart from the discounted price of miles.
By comparison, Avianca LifeMiles revamped their subscription model this year with a whole new LifeMiles+ program and that program has far more interesting features. Whereas the only tangible benefit of the Flying Blue subscription is that miles won’t expire while you’re subscribed, LifeMiles added features to their subscriptions like a 10% rebate on award bookings and free changes and cancellations from the second tier up. I’d be more excited about these Flying Blue subscriptions if they offered similar benefits. That said, Air France offers the ability to cancel at any time, whereas LifeMiles+ from Avianca requires subscribing for a minimum of 6 months.
Still, this will be a good tool to keep in mind for the day when it comes in handy. Even if the subscriptions themselves aren’t terribly useful, the ability to buy a small basket of miles for a good price could certainly come in handy at some point.
H/T: One Mile at a Time
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Don’t know if anyone noticed, but 50K transatlantic business class one way award are almost all gone. Now the rule is more like 120/130K with some going for 700K! No thank you.
One to avoid – TAP. I subscribed to Silver last year and now I find:
1) Their low-cost transatlantic crossings have been discontinued;
2) Their miles program has undrgone a huge devaluation (value halved in the case of NA to SA Star Alliance awards):
3) The miles will start ex;piring in June (50k in the first tranche)!
Good option to top off for an award but I would rather just transfer bank points
if I subscribe to monthly miles purchase, and I use a Chase sapphire reserve or Chase Ink preferred, will I get 3 x points (travel category)?
miles in the subscription program are not coded as travel.
@ Nick — PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, expand upon this: “Miles won’t expire as long as you’re subscribed”. Which miles? Transferred miles, miles earned by flying/credit card, or both?
And what exactly does “as long as” mean? One month or 24 months or something else?
From Flying Blue website:
Your Miles do not expire as long as you have a subscription active (recurring on a monthly basis). After cancellation, you will have 24 months to use your Miles before they expire.
BOTH types of miles?
Here’s the answer: “With a Subscribe to Miles subscription you will keep your account active and prevent your Miles from expiring. Note: this only applies to commercial Miles, not to flight Miles.” So, as suspected, this does NOT keep your Flying Blue miles from expiring.