In December 2022, Air France / KLM Flying Blue added free stopovers to Air France and KLM award tickets. Then, in July 2023, they added free stopovers to partner awards. This is potentially amazing. Few award programs allow free stopovers on award flights these days, and those that do have strict limitations to how many you can have, whether or not they’re allowed on one-way awards, etc. Flying Blue doesn’t seem to have any of those limitations. And, unlike Aeroplan, they don’t charge extra for stopovers. That said, here we are more than a year after stopovers were first introduced, and I still don’t know much about them. How do they work? What are their rules? How can we eke out maximum value?
This is planned to be a series of posts or, at minimum, a two-parter. In this first post, I’ve dug into Flying Blue’s limited documentation about free stopovers. I used this info to summarize the rules as I understand them, and to postulate ways to get fantastic value. In follow-up posts I plan to try out some of the ideas presented below. I’ll let you know then what works and what doesn’t.
Free stopover rules
Must contact Flying Blue to book awards with stopovers
Hopefully someday these will be bookable online, but for now you have to contact Flying Blue customer service. Flying Blue’s documentation states: “Stopovers […] are bookable via customer service.”
All flight segments must be “saver” awards
Flying Blue’s documentation states: “Pricing is based on the overall booking class availability on the itinerary. A stopover can only be booked for the entry price if the lowest booking class is available on all flights.”
This is simple enough when booking partner awards. For example, when using Flying Blue miles to book Delta awards, all segments must be available to book through Flying Blue.
This is more nebulous when looking at Air France or KLM’s own flights. How can you know if the segments are available at the “lowest booking class” when Flying Blue dynamically prices their awards? You can try comparing the price of individual segments to their award chart (found here), but that award chart is very limited and seems to mostly show just the lowest price of any flight between regions even though certain routes may cost much more even at their lowest pricing.
I think it’s safe to say that when looking for business class flights between North America and Europe, if you can find segments pricing at 50,000 miles it should qualify (because we happen to know that that’s the best standard price for those flights). But, for other routes, the only thing I can think of is to check whether a partner airline like Delta or Virgin Atlantic shows those Air France or KLM flights. If they do, those segments should be fair game for a free stopover.
Can add an unlimited number of stopovers for free
Flying Blue’s documentation states: “You can add an unlimited number of stopovers to the booking without a maximum connection time.”
This is potentially amazing, but as you’ll see further down, stopovers don’t make a lot of sense unless all of the flights are on a single carrier. This limits but doesn’t eliminate the possibilities. With this feature, we can string together multiple flights with a single carrier within a single country and add one international destination. Or even add multiple international destinations by taking advantage of fifth freedom flights (these are flights that operate entirely outside of the carrier’s home country).
Caution: While the limited documentation says that you can have unlimited stopovers, it doesn’t explicitly say that you can do so without increasing the award price. I intend to find out for certain one way or the other.
Stopovers can be booked up to a year in advance of the final flight segment
Flying Blue’s documentation states: “Stopovers can be booked up to 365 days in advance of the last segment of the flight.”
That’s not a surprising limitation since you can’t usually book simple award flights more than a year in advance anyway.
Free stopovers can be at any airport
Flying Blue’s documentation states: “Stopovers are available on Air France, KLM and Flying Blue airline partners and all airports.”
Stopovers are allowed on one-way awards
Flying Blue’s documentation includes multiple one-way examples:
- “For the itinerary LAX-DXB, with a stopover in CDG and fully operated by Air France, the pricing is based on LAX-DXB.”
- “For the open-jaw itinerary BCN-AMS-ATH, with a stopover in AMS and fully operated by KLM, the pricing is based on BCN-ATH.”
Stopovers are free when the flights before and after each stopover are with the same carrier
When you mix carriers, the segments are priced separately and added together and so there’s little reason to book mixed-carrier stopover awards. It would be simpler to book them separately and the total price should be the same either way.
Flying Blue’s documentation states: “Partner-operated segments are always priced separately per partner for Flying Blue reward tickets”.
The documentation further provides these examples:
- “Example 1: For the itinerary FCO-MSP, with stopovers in AMS and BOS, and with FCO-AMS-BOS operated by KLM and BOS-MSP operated by Delta Air Lines, the pricing is based on FCO-BOS + BOS-MSP.”
- My interpretation: The entire route in the example involves flying KLM from Rome to Amsterdam (stopover) to Boston (stopover), and then flying Delta from Boston to Minneapolis. The award price then would be based on the award price to fly KLM from Rome to Boston plus the award cost to fly Delta from Boston to Minneapolis.
- I believe that it would be the same award price and logistically easier to book two awards:
- KLM from Rome to Amsterdam (stopover) to Boston
- Delta from Boston to Minneapolis
- “Example 2: For the itinerary AMS-AKL, with stopovers in SIN and SYD, and with AMS-SIN operated by KLM and SIN-SYD-AKL operated by Qantas Airways, the pricing is based on AMS-SIN + SIN-AKL.”
- My interpretation: The entire route in the example involves flying KLM from Amsterdam to Singapore (stopover), and then flying Qantas Airways from Singapore to Sydney Australia (stopover), and then to Auckland New Zealand. The award price then would be the price to fly KLM from Amsterdam to Singapore plus the award cost to fly Qantas from Singapore to Auckland.
- I believe that it would be the same award price and logistically easier to book two awards:
- KLM from Amsterdam to Singapore
- Qantas Airways from Singapore to Sydney Australia (stopover), and then to Auckland New Zealand
When mixing airlines, the segments flown by each airline are priced separately
See the documentation and examples cited in the rule above.
The award price is based on the price from origin to destination (for all contiguous segments flown by a single airline)
Flying Blue’s documentation states: “For the segments operated by Air France or KLM, the origin and destination of the itinerary determine the pricing.” And for partners they confusingly state what I believe to be the same thing: “For stopovers on outstations, no additional charges will be applied.” I base this (the idea that pricing is based on the origin and destination of the partner route) on an example in the documentation:
- “For […] SIN-SYD-AKL operated by Qantas Airways, the pricing is based on […] SIN-AKL.”
Backtracking usually isn’t allowed, except in Europe
Flying Blue’s documentation states: “In the case of a connecting flight in the opposite direction, the stopover breaks the fare, and two segments are quoted. An exception applies for intra-European itineraries.”
The documentation further adds these examples:
- “Example 1: For the open-jaw itinerary LAX-CDG-JFK, with a stopover in CDG and fully operated by Air France, the pricing is based on LAX-CDG + CDG-JFK.”
- “Example 2: For the open-jaw itinerary BCN-AMS-ATH, with a stopover in AMS and fully operated by KLM, the pricing is based on BCN-ATH.”
My take on this is that Flying Blue is saying that nearly-round-trip awards (like LA to Paris to New York) will be counted as two one-way awards. That’s fair and expected.
Are mixed cabin awards allowed? How are they priced?
Suppose you want to fly Air France business class from the US to Paris, stopover, then fly Paris to Florence economy class. Would that work and price as a single award? Would the change in class of service break the award pricing into two segments? I can’t find anything in the documentation to address this, but my guess is that it would price as a single business class award.
Ideas for maximizing value
Backtracking Europe
I find it interesting that Flying Blue explicitly allows backtracking within Europe (they probably allow backpacking in Europe too, but that’s a post for a different day and a different author). I wonder how far you could take it? For example, could you do a near round-trip for the price of a one-way award by booking from/to nearby airports? For example, I wonder if this route would price as a one-way award: Florence Italy to Amsterdam (stopover) to Bologna Italy. Maybe that wouldn’t work since the start and end are in the same country? OK, how about this: Nice France to Amsterdam (stopover) to Genoa Italy? Would this price as one-way NCE to GOA?
You might think that you could take this further and hop all around Europe for a year on a single one-way award ticket, but you probably can’t. The reason is that almost all of Air France’s flights connect to Paris and almost all of KLM’s flights connect to Amsterdam. In order to book a complicated award within Europe that is either all Air France or all KLM, you would have to go through Paris or Amsterdam multiple times. My assumption is that the second time through an airport would break the fare. It’s worth checking that though!
Big country hopping
By booking a one-way award with a single Flying Blue partner it should be possible to hop all around that country for a year on a single one-way fare. Note these caveats:
- I don’t know exactly when a flight is considered to be going “in the opposite direction” (which would break the fare). I put together an example that goes entirely east to west, but it also bounces up and down between north and south so that might break the fare?
- While the limited documentation says that you can have unlimited stopovers, it doesn’t explicitly say that you can do so without increasing the award price. This will require testing to see what works!
For example, you should be able to use Flying Blue miles to book Delta from Boston to Minneapolis (stopover) then to Seattle for the same price as Boston to Seattle. But you should also be able to do much, much more such as: Boston to New York (stopover) to Miami (stopover) to Detroit (stopover) to Atlanta (stopover) to Chicago (stopover) to Minneapolis (stopover) to Austin (stopover) to Salt Lake City (stopover) to Las Vegas (stopover) to Los Angeles (stopover) to Seattle. In theory, this entire route should cost the same as Boston to Seattle, one-way. At the time of this writing that would mean paying only 20,500 miles for economy or 54,000 miles for business class (regional first class).
Bouncing through Africa
While most airlines fly primarily within their own country and between their own country and other countries, SkyTeam partner Kenya Airways has a large number of fifth freedom flights that operate entirely outside of Kenya (source: Australian Frequent Flyer):
- Abidjan (ABJ) – Dakar (DSS) 27/01/23
- Accra (ACC) – Dakar (DSS) 11/12/23
- Freetown (FNA) – Accra (ACC) 27/01/23
- Monrovia (ROB) – Accra (ACC) 27/01/23
- Entebbe (EBB) – Bangui (BGF) 27/01/23
- Bangui (BGF) – Douala (DLA) 11/12/23
- Livingstone (LVI) – Cape Town (CPT) 27/01/23
- Victoria Falls (VFA) – Cape Town (CPT) 27/01/23
- Harare (HRE) – Lusaka (LUN) 27/01/23
- Lilongwe (LLW) – Nampula (APL) 27/01/23
- Lubumbashi – (FBM) Ndola (NLA)
Theoretically, we could hop around a bit of Africa on Kenya Airways with a route such as: Dakar Senegal to Accra (stopover) to Nairobi (stopover) to Victoria Falls (stopover) to Cape Town all for the same price as going from Dakar to Cape Town one-way.
Note these caveats:
- I don’t know exactly when a flight is considered to be going “in the opposite direction” (which would break the fare). In the example above, we start out going east but then turn slightly west as we go south. Does that break the fare even though it is all within a single region (Africa)?
- While the limited documentation says that you can have unlimited stopovers, it doesn’t explicitly say that you can do so without increasing the award price. This will require testing to see what works!
Bouncing around the world
It should be possible to build a “round the world” award for as little as the price of two one-way awards. The key is to book half way around the world on one airline and the other half around on another. Here’s one theoretical example:
- Qantas Airways: New York to Auckland (stopover) to Sydney (stopover) to Perth (stopover) to Bali (stopover). This should price the same as New York to Bali.
- KLM: Bali to Singapore (stopover) to Amsterdam (stopover) to New York. This should price the same as Bali to New York.
Note this caveat: While the limited documentation says that you can have unlimited stopovers, it doesn’t explicitly say that you can do so without increasing the award price. This will require testing to see what works!
If the above works, then you could also add another one-way fare in the middle with a third carrier. For example, perhaps you would fly Etihad from Singapore to Abu Dhabi (stopover) to Cape Town (stopover), then KLM to Amsterdam then to New York.
Flying Blue’s Free Stopover Documentation
I couldn’t find much in the way of official documentation about Flying Blue’s free award ticket stopovers, but they do include information and examples within a FAQ found here (hat tip: Loyalty Lobby). Here’s the relevant section:
Can I include a stopover on my Reward ticket?
You can book stopovers depending on availability. Stopovers are available on Air France, KLM and Flying Blue airline partners and all airports, and are bookable via customer service.
You can add an unlimited number of stopovers to the booking without a maximum connection time. Stopovers can be booked up to 365 days in advance of the last segment of the flight.
For the segments operated by Air France or KLM, the origin and destination of the itinerary determine the pricing.
Example 1: For the itinerary LAX-DXB, with a stopover in CDG and fully operated by Air France, the pricing is based on LAX-DXB.
Example 2: For the itinerary AMS-DPS, with a stopover in SIN and fully operated by KLM, the pricing is based on AMS-DPS.Partner-operated segments are always priced separately per partner for Flying Blue reward tickets. For stopovers on outstations, no additional charges will be applied.
Example 1: For the itinerary FCO-MSP, with stopovers in AMS and BOS, and with FCO-AMS-BOS operated by KLM and BOS-MSP operated by Delta Air Lines, the pricing is based on FCO-BOS + BOS-MSP.
Example 2: For the itinerary AMS-AKL, with stopovers in SIN and SYD, and with AMS-SIN operated by KLM and SIN-SYD-AKL operated by Qantas Airways, the pricing is based on AMS-SIN + SIN-AKL.In the case of a connecting flight in the opposite direction, the stopover breaks the fare, and two segments are quoted. An exception applies for intra-European itineraries.
Example 1: For the open-jaw itinerary LAX-CDG-JFK, with a stopover in CDG and fully operated by Air France, the pricing is based on LAX-CDG + CDG-JFK.
Example 2: For the open-jaw itinerary BCN-AMS-ATH, with a stopover in AMS and fully operated by KLM, the pricing is based on BCN-ATH.Pricing is based on the overall booking class availability on the itinerary. A stopover can only be booked for the entry price if the lowest booking class is available on all flights.
Next Steps
I believe that the biggest unknowns here are as follows:
- Can you really add more than one stopover per one-way without increasing the price? If so, is there a limit? Does the answer vary based on whether the award is with KLM or Air France vs. a partner?
- What amount of backtracking is allowed other than within Europe?
- Are mixed cabin awards allowed?
My first task will be to answer the first question, above. I plan to identify a simple two-layover Delta award, and a simple two-layover Air France or KLM award. I’ll then call to see if either or both are bookable. Depending upon what I learn from that, I’ll either do more experiments to see if there are limits to the numbers of stopovers, or I’ll move on to testing the backtracking question.
Do you have any experience booking Flying Blue award stopovers? Whether you were successful or not, please let us know the details in the comments below. Thanks!
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Booked a friend ORD>CDG (stop 2 weeks)>BKK for 35k +$188 in economy vs 20+25=45k
Very much liking this system!
how to find DL award seats? I couldn’t find any DL award seats within North, Central and South America on Flying Blue site. Moveover, the box of ” North America” to “North America” is blank, meaning it is disallowed?
As long as you select “Book with Miles” you should be able to find Delta flights when they’re available to partners. If you accidentally keep it on the “Book a flight” tab, you won’t find any flights entirely within the Americas because Air France/KLM doesn’t sell those flights
I did my first stopover with AF – Athens/CDG/IAH Aug of last year – Spent a 4 day weekend in Paris with no additional cost at all. Need to look into other possible trips brought up in the article. Thanks Greg!
Update: It seems that you really can add as many Delta stopovers as you want… sort of for free. Price will go up though as the total distance increases.
“When mixing airlines, the segments flown by each airline are priced separately”
For this, is booking first segment by Air France and second segment by KLM be considered the same or different airlines? Would it be mixing airlines under Flying Blue?
I’m pretty sure it would be considered to be different airlines.
Flying Blue partners with Qantas?
Yep. They have a number of surprising partners. Singapore and Etihad too.
Can’t wait to hear the results. Flying Blue has already become VERY valuable with their U.S. to Europe pricing. This would definitely put them up there with Air Canada as a program to speculatively transfer points to during a bonus.
To get a better understanding on trying to plan a trip out, would you suggest trying to plan it on line, to see where you might be able to make connections from beginning to final destination? It’s confusing to me to understand if you use miles to plan say a one way trip, don’t mile amounts required change depending on availability of seats? So you do your first stop over, stay say a week & continue to next stop over, that could change the amount of miles needed for that travel date? Wouldn’t it? Sorry new to understanding all if this, thank you so much for this article, very interesting & helpful knowing there are ways to maximize your ticket value.
What do we know about when stopovers can be added? I have a CDG-YVR booking in saver biz (50K). Can I call in now and add a segment LHR-CDG?
Ooh, good question. I don’t know
I did that in Oct. I was holding a ticket from Paris to Washington. I called and got them to add a segment from Helsinki to Paris.
I was checking the Helsinki to Paris prices for a week or two and once the flight time I wanted dropped to the lowest rate (10000 I think, don’t remember) I called.
For all I know, they canceled my first itinerary and then booked the second itinerary (the one with the stop over). At the time I called I am pretty sure there was still low price award availability from Paris to DC. So, obviously, if your question is whether you would lose a current segment, which might no longer be available, I can’t answer that .
The flying blue representative on the phone was great. He did not charge the $50 fee and the price of my award went down from 70,000 for the single leg to 57,500 for the itinerary with the stopover. I think the taxes went up marginally so he did take my credit card for that
Thanks Neal–this is super helpful. Did they give you a new PNR? If not, I’m inclined to think they did not rebook and just added the segment. My route no longer has saver tix available, so if that’s a requirement, this wont’ work out for me. One other question–why did the price go down from 70K to 57.5?
Quick check leaves me pretty certain there was a new record locator.
In any case you certainly can call and ask and see if they say it is possible. I’m sure that datapoint would help Greg.
Not sure why price went down. My guess then was some sort of married segment pricing where Paris to DC was 70k and Helsinki to DC was 59,000 (checking my TripIt records I think it was 59k not 57.5k). Or possibly the price for Paris to DC went down by the time I called to add the segment. I wasn’t monitoring that because at the time I booked 70000 had been the lowest level for quite a while but right around this time FB dropped the lowest level to 50ish.
For sure, i’ll be testing it out w/ them once i figure out my date for LHR-CDG.
Please report back here also with the results!
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
Maybe its that using their credit card is being treated that same way as crediting a flight to them. I will try using the card again- as see if it extends some or all of my points
Oh yes, this happened to me and flying blue has been pretty useless in trying to explain it and fix it. What’s more, when I book a new ticket, the miles sometimes come from the later to expire tranche. And when I cancel a ticket and redeposit the points, they sometimes go into the earlier to expire tranche. Exactly reversed from what you’d want.
Like you I have never credited a flight to flying blue. I have transferred miles from both Capital One and American Express and my guess is that is what is causing the problem.
Neal,
Do you have the flying blue credit card?
No
Flown miles and credit card miles are in a separate branch from transferred miles, let’s call the former “paid” and the latter “earned”. Transferable points and family pooling only renews “earned” miles which haven’t yet been converted to “paid” by the credit card or a credited flight. Once points post from the FB card, all the points in your account are homogenized as “paid” points, and you’ll only see one expiration date.
My wife and I both have the FB credit card, we have family pooling, and I credited a paid flight years ago. Once I did that, I found that I’ll always need to maintain the card or credit a flight to keep the miles active past the 24-month expiration. (it’s a keeper card, thankfully) Whenever I transfer miles from a bank or pool them from my family, they have their own expiration date until the Flying Blue MC statement closes.
Yes, it’s convoluted, but cleverly incentivizes engagement with a valuable program, and there are easy workarounds.
Definitely interested in what’s actually possible! You’re totally right about FBs lack of documentation which even extends to their expiration rules. Can a future article address those pls?
Here’s a post that addresses expiration of miles: https://frequentmiler.com/air-frances-flying-blue-miles-are-easier-to-extend-than-i-thought/
Thanks. I’d read this but it didn’t definitively confirm that transferring points would extend the miles, only that it should. Is there confirmation of that. Also, FB says crediting partner flights will extend, but doesn’t say which partners
I believe it’s any airline partner in a fare class that earns points would extend your miles but it would make all your miles airline miles. If that’s what your miles are already it’s no problem.
Any other partner that earns points would extend your non-airline miles. I transferred Accord points (bad deal but they would have expired otherwise) and that extended my FB miles.
Can confirm that transferring more points DOES extend the life of your FB miles (at least, when your only FB miles are from previous transfers).
I don’t know if finding partner availability is the key to identifying eligibility. I recently booked an AF flight VCE-CDG in business for 8k Virgin miles, when the same flight cost 38k miles through FlyingBlue. As the lowest possible award redemption rate on this route appears to be 15k for business for FB (available on other days), I don’t think I would have been able to book this as a stopover, although I didn’t call to find out. I have a later CDG-EWR flight booked on AF, so the free stopover would have helped, but I just assumed given the high award price with FB it wouldn’t have qualified.
Ah good point. I’ll test that.
I was looking at this yesterday for some other reason… VS shows lots of AF awards to CDG from the West Coast but if you go search for them on AF, they are not available at the 50k low level. So idk how the dynamic pricing works. Maybe it’s more like Delta, where Delta availability for partner bookings doesn’t mean saver pricing when booking through Delta.
Does anyone know how this dynamic works with AF/KL?
Can you figure out how married segment inventory interacts with stopovers?
That’s really difficult. My assumption is that the individual legs before and after the stopover have to be available at whatever the lowest price is for them. But I could be totally wrong about that. Maybe married segment logic affects availability and/or pricing even when there’s a stopover
The problem is, at least from the West Coast, there is a LOT more availability with married segments than just point to point to CDG or AMS at the low 50k rate.
How about if you find 2 married segments on different days say SFO-CDG-BCN May 12+May 18 could you call and have the stopover from May12-May18 in Paris? Maybe another thing to add to your research?
Yes, that is part of my question. But also what if there is SFO-CDG-BCN on May 12 at 50k and not on May 18, can you fly SFO-CDG on May 12, stop 10 days, then fly CDG-BCN which is available at low all the time for the all-in price of 50k?
I’m excited to read your follow up post and hope you can answer most / all of your questions 🙂
Yeah, totally, this sounds like a fun experiment. Hi Grant!
Jason! Long time no see 🙂