We got a great tip from Erda in the Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group about an Air France/KLM sweet spot which may or may not be a glitch. You can currently book domestic Delta flights from only 1,500 Flying Blue miles in economy and from 4,000 miles in first class.
This pricing only seems to be available on short haul routes, but it represents savings of about 75% compared to the number of SkyMiles that Delta wants for the same award flights.
One of the examples that Erda provided was flying from Albany to New York City. The award pricing initially displays as 5,000 miles in economy or 15,000 in first class for the hour-long flight (note that Flying Blue labels it as business class, but it’s domestic first). That pricing is pretty good seeing as Delta seems to charge about twice that when redeeming SkyMiles.
However, that pricing gets significantly better. If you expand one of the itineraries to actually book it, you’ll see that on at least some dates you can book this flight for only 3,000 miles in economy or 7,500 miles in first.
That’s superb, especially seeing as the taxes and fees amount to $15.91 – only ~$10 more than you’d usually expect to pay for a domestic award flight through other programs.
Erda highlighted some other routes such as Seattle to Vancouver which is bookable from only 2,500 miles. The lowest pricing they identified was between Detroit and Cleveland which can be booked from only 2,000 Flying Blue miles one way in economy or only 5,000 miles in first class.
That pricing is unbelievable considering Delta wants 17,500 SkyMiles for basic economy and 31,500 SkyMiles for first class.
Update: James & Jeb have identified in the comments that the MSP-RST (Minneapolis, MN to Rochester, MN) route is available from only 1,500 miles in economy or 4,000 miles in first class.
The Flying Blue website states that these tickets don’t come with seat selection, which made me think that you’d get booked into basic economy with Delta rather than main economy if you select the economy option. However, John shared in the comments below that he was able to select seats for no fee during the booking process, so hopefully that’ll be the case for other people booking these discounted routes.
There’s also a 70 Euro fee if you want to change or cancel your flight, but if you’re only redeeming 2,000 miles then it’d make more sense to effectively just throw that award booking away rather than paying that much to get 2k miles returned to you.
There seems to be some excellent award availability for multiple passengers too. For example, there are at least 8 tickets available on January 25 from Detroit to Cleveland and I wouldn’t be surprised if you find similar availability on other dates and routes too. On that search, it initially shows up as costing a total of 40,000 miles for all 8 people, but drops to 16,000 miles when you go to actually book it.
This award pricing could get even lower if you take advantage of the regular transfer bonuses that are available to Flying Blue from programs like American Express Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou, etc.
Something worth noting is that the month-long calendar view trick doesn’t seem to work when searching for domestic awards. For flights on Air France and/or KLM metal, you can leave the date field blank when doing an award search and it’ll display award pricing by month. When trying to do that for domestic flights in the US, it’ll state that there’s no award availability, but that’s not the case – you simply have to select a date to run the search.
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FYI, Slightly off topic… You can use your Alaska miles to fly LGA or JFK/IAD for 4500 miles on AA metal.
I saw a one way flight to Buffalo (BUF) from JFK in March for 6000 points, so if you want to go to Buffalo, you can get a pretty good deal.
Clearly a YMMV. SJC-SLC in Business is 52,500 (and on some days 22,000).
Clearly you didn’t read the article. SJC-SLC doesn’t qualify as short haul.
I just bought SEA -> GEG roundtrip, the first price is 10k miles for 2, clicking through it changed to 9k.
I booked 2 roundtrips for 18k points + ~$60 total and as a DP, I was able to select seats during the KLM booking process for a $0 addon. So seat selection was free for me
That’s great info – thanks! I’ll update the post regarding seat selection.
Just booked a business class domestic on Aeromexico with Flying Blue points. Was pleasantly surprised to see the points cost drop from 15k to 10k at checkout. Nice deal with the Chase bonus too! (Aeromexico wanted 36k miles for the same flight.)
I thought I should check this out, and went to log into my Flying Blue account. And that is how I found out Flying Blue memberships are deleted if you don’t deposit any points for two years. :\
FYI saw pop up adds on this page. Last podcast requested we let you know.
Highly doubt these would code as Basic Economy fares, as partner-issued DL awards book into the N fare class. The “no seat selection before check-in” is probably standard / incorrect verbiage.
Just bought Portland to Seattle at 2500 points. It was coded into main economy. I was able to select a seat for no fee.
Thank you frequent miler!
God bless Erda!
“Something worth noting is that the month-long calendar view trick doesn’t seem to work when searching for domestic awards.”
Stephen, is it because partner flights aren’t ever shown if you leave the dates blank to get Flying Blue’s month view?
That may well be the case – I can’t remember if I’d tried using the month-long view trick for partner award searches before.
iAd or Dca to jfk flights show 4500 instead of 5000 so a 500 points reduction
Any data points on how short the fight has to be for these prices?
All those routes seem to be below 100 miles.
Portland to Seattle is 2500 points. I think it is about 130 miles
Wow thanks for pointing this out! I’m seeing 1,500 for my local route…
Yeah – MSP – RST (to add a data point for verification) shows up at 1,500 miles.