This morning I published details about a 25% Transfer Bonus from Citi ThankYou Rewards to Air France Flying Blue. In the original version of the post, I wrote “Flying Blue miles expire after 24 months and can only be renewed with crediting paid flights to Flying Blue or putting spend on an Air France credit card.” Well, thanks to reader input, I learned that I was wrong. It appears that you can extend the life of miles that were transferred in to Flying Blue simply by transferring in some more miles. But the full story is not that simple: it appears that Flying Blue tracks two kinds of miles: miles earned from flights (including partner flights), and miles earned from other partners. The options for keeping your miles from expiring differ depending upon which type of miles you have. Confused yet?
Here’s what’s written in the Flying Blue FAQ:
How long do my miles stay valid?
As long as 1 of the following conditions is fulfilled, your Miles remain valid for life:
- You travel at least once every 2 years on an eligible flight with Air France, KLM or one of the partner airlines.
- You are a Silver, Gold or Platinum member.
- You make a purchase with an eligible partner bank card at least once every 2 years.
So, if I understand this right, here’s how it works…
Miles earned from flights are relatively hard to extend
Flying Blue miles earned from actual flying can only be extended beyond 24 months by taking an eligible flight (and crediting it to Flying Blue), or by being an elite member, or making a purchase with your Air France / KLM Flying Blue credit card.
Miles earned from partner activity (including point transfers) are easy to extend
Beyond the list of ways to extend miles from flights, partner activity miles can also be extended by earning more miles from partners. So, if you have miles from a point transfer which are about to expire, simply transfer another 1,000 points or so to Flying Blue and the older miles should then be extended by 24 months.
Note: If you credit flight activity to your account, all older miles become like flight miles and can only be extended in the ways described above (flights, elite status, credit card spend).
Conclusion
I used to dismiss transfer bonuses to Flying Blue due to my understanding of how hard it was to keep the miles alive if you didn’t use them within 24 months. Now, I know that that’s not an issue after all.
I can’t imagine why those in charge of the Flying Blue program want to make this so complicated, though! Why not just do what most other programs do and extend the life of all miles with any qualifying activity?
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I just transferred points from Amex. It shows the new points have an expiration date of 2 years from today but the older points will expire in 20 months. Did they change this so that new points transfers no longer affect older points?
This is what my account shows after transferring 18K points on Oct. 11:
32,558 valid until 12 June 2026
18,000 valid until 11 October 2026
**Update–it looks like spend from the credit card moves the expiration up 2 years but credit card transfer bonuses do not.
I think you got caught in the trap. If the only miles you have in your account are miles transferred in from a credit card (Amex, Chase, etc), then those miles can be extended by transferring in more miles. Flying Blue differentiates “flight miles” from credit card miles. If you credit flight miles to a FlyingBlue account it will immediately convert all miles in your account to flight miles and extend them 24 months. The problem with that is that now none of the miles in your account can be extended via a credit card transfer.
For example, if you had 40,000 miles from a card transfer and you credited 100 miles from a flight (could be a partner flight credit to Flying Blue), you would end up with 40,100 miles and those miles are all converted to flight miles and none of those miles can now be extended via a credit card transfer even though 40k of those miles were originally from a credit card transfer. Based on your report it seems miles credited from an Air France credit card are treated as flying miles and once your AF credit card credits miles to your account all your current miles are converted to flying miles and extended 24 months. This is not a problem so long as you maintain the Air France credit card and charge even a small amount on it before the miles expiration date, but if you get rid of the AF card or forget to charge something on it within 24 months – goodbye miles.
Yes, JohnSF is correct. The miles from co-branded BofA FlyingBlue credit card are treated as “flying” miles.. and convert the whole balance into the “flying” miles at the time of the credit… as soon as you get another batch of your “credit card” miles credited the both groups are combined into one and (flying group) and extended.. but the whole balance looses an option to be extended by a transfer from Chase or Amex.
I am in exactly the same position.. I would guess that the anniversary bonus from a CC does the same… sucks..as the only way out is to use up the miles, and cancel the card. Then you have a clean start with transferred miles.. or you have to keep the card (and pay the annual fee)…
Really bad.. and why would you punish the people who actually earn the points by flying or holding your card… beyond my understanding.
Just transferred from AMEX. Posted in 5 mins like the other post here and It was immediately extented 2 yrs.
Were the points you have in FB about to expire also from AMEX?
When do miles earned from credit card and sign up bonus expire?
I rented a car with Avis and put in my Air France account. When I got the miles from the rental, my points expiration extended another two years.
02/01/2024: My points were about to expire in 3 months, I just did a points transfer from my Amex to FB account and with in minutes, I see new expiration date for 2 more years.
Thank you
Same for me.
Were the points you have in FB about to expire also from AMEX?
Very interesting. I did stopovers last summer in paris (on the way to lisbon on AF) and in madrid on air Europa on the way back. This is a really nice feature of flying blue
One question regarding points expiration- I recently transferred my bilt points over to AF- on 1/1. and now my flying blue app shows 2 expiration dates- one for the old miles which were transfers from AMex,etc and from getting their credit card, and one for the new miles transferred in. I have never credited a flight to this account.
Any idea whats up? Any idea how to extend the expiry? Do I need to credit a flight? I thought that previously that this would be a bad deal
Thanks
Additional data point regarding points extension… My newish Flying Blue (FB) account points history:
Greg,
How about if I book an AWARD flight using my Flying Dutchman miles? (on DL metal) will this “activity/withdraw) extend my KLM miles? (flying miles and commercial miles)
I don’t know
Thanks for the info. This was great! Confirming that transferring miles from American Express extended my miles in Flying Blue account for another 2 years. Current miles in the account were originally transferred from Amex pre-Covid, used points to book a flight and then cancelled flight due to Covid.
Hi, I have a few hundred thousand FB miles and have been told that they will expire before the end of December 2022. I have been waiting for a knee replacement (hopefully before the end of this year), as a result I cannot book a flight. I don’t have anything that I can transfer into my FB miles to gain extension. Could I pay for a flight to gain to extension to my FB miles for a further 2 years even though there may be a possibility that I would not be able to travel.
I’ve got exactly the same problem and been trying to figure out how to get them all extended. It seems the easiest would be to get a Flying Blue Credit Card, but it seems you need to be a Dutch resident to get this (I live in the UK)… so that doesn’t seem to be an option.
In the UK I can get an AmEx card which gets Membership Rewards, which can then be transferred to Flying Blue, but I suspect that this will not extend the 350k air-miles I have with them for another 2 years. Reading the comments below thought it seems that some other cards seem to work – someone mentioned Citi worked, but not sure if that was a UK credit card….
Help anyone?
Looks like the Flying Blue mastercard is through Bank of America.
No, unfortunately, buying a flight isn’t enough. You have to actually fly it to get the miles (and to extend your old ones).
Book an award ticket with your FB miles. You can book it for December next year, then change the date when you feel better. Its an easy way for extending your miles.
If you have a stay at a Fairmont or other such Accor property, if you link your Accor account to your Flying Blue account, they have an arrangement similar to what Delta and SPG used to have where, in addition to the normal hotel points, hotel stays will earn Flying Blue miles. These will also extend the validity of transferred miles in my experience (though I assume it would not extend miles earned by flying.)
Good to know, thanks!
Just got an email saying all Flying Blue miles extended to 12/31/22.
Just transferred 1000 miles from Citi into my 31k FB miles which were set to expire 12/31/21. I then logged back into my FB account and it now shows all miles to expire 11/30/2023. Thanks everyone!
[…] The existing articles about what resets the expiration of miles in AirFrance/KLM’s FlyingBlue mileage program are all over the board, and they conflict with one another at the surface level. There’s only one thing that’s been certain to this point: crediting an actual SkyTeam revenue flight to your FlyingBlue account will reset expiration and kick the can down the road for another two years. […]
I guess I didn’t read the text well enough. a few years back I transferred in 20,000 Ultimate rewards points to use to fly from Hanoi to Hong Kong on Vietnam Air only to find out that I couldn’t use Flying Blue miles to book Vietnam Air. The original 24 months were close to expiring so I credited a short DL flight to FB. this extended the miles for another 24 months. Then, the miles were extended to 12/31/21 due to Covid. I just transferred 1,000 MR points to FB and got, with bonus, 1,250 FB miles added to my account. I just checked my FB account and the 1,250 miles expire in 24 months. The original 20,125 miles that I had in my account still expire on 12/31/21 so no I am stuck with trying to book a short no need flight on DL to extend the original miles or apply for an Air France credit card which wrecks my overall credit card strategy. Flying Blue totally sucks IMHO.
I feel you, I would have made the same mistake were it not for this article. I was under the false impression for years that I had to post a SkyTeam flight credit or get a FB credit card to extend my miles. This is the first and only article that has been clear about this rule (on accounts that ONLY have transfer activity) – and the comments really support it as well – super helpful and what a relief. The other stuff I’ve read in the past only worked to confuse and bring me down.