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Air France / KLM’s Flying Blue has released the latest set of Promo Awards, with some good values including 46,875 miles one-way in business class from New York to Paris or between Europe and Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver. If you fly into Paris or Amsterdam, there are also a number of European cities available from 6800 miles each way from those cities. Those with an adventurous spirit who are piecing together a longer trip might also find value in the promo awards from Europe to French Guiana or Suriname or to the Middle East. The nice thing about Flying Blue is that they are transfer partners with everyone — whether you have Chase Ultimate Rewards points, Citi ThankYou points, American Express Membership Rewards points, or SPG points, you can transfer them to put together an award.
The Deal
- Flying Blue Promo Awards available for booking 12/1-12/31 for travel 2/1/18 to 3/31/18
- Direct link to promo awards page
Quick Thoughts
Every month, Flying Blue releases promo award pricing on a number of routes. The current promo awards are available for booking from today through December 31, 2017 and are good for travel from February 1st, 2018 through March 31st, 2018.
Travelers based in North America don’t have many options, but there are still deals available from New York or several Canadian cities to Europe for 46,875 miles one-way:
If you’re looking to travel on from there to the Middle East, there are a number of promo awards available in both business and premium economy class. I also found the rates to the “Caribbean” decent considering the fact that it’s actually French Guiana and Suriname that they consider as the Caribbean (and economy class is available as low as 15K with the promo awards). I’ve never been to either country and know very little about them, but the rates look decent if those are on your itinerary.
The nice thing about the promo awards is that they can be booked one-way, allowing you to piece together a trip to visit a few places if you intend to take advantage of more than oneaward. Also always noteworthy is that Flying Blue considers both Israel and Morocco to be in “Europe”. Economy class flights between the many European cities on the award chart and Israel for 6800 miles one-way would be a steal — as would business class from the western Canadian cities. That also enables you to take advantage of other award chart categorization — for example, flying from Morocco to South Africa on a different award ticket with a program that considers both locations to be in Africa.
See the Flying Blue promo page for more details.
H/T: Doctor of Credit
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Gary Leff posted an article earlier this year regarding problems with Flying Blue redemptions after a large points transfers:
http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2017/07/29/air-france-klm-still-shutting-accounts-sending-people-airport-ticket-awards/comment-page-1/#comment-4690687
I have unsuccessfully been able to get any clarity of reassurance from Flying Blue or Chase UR program that this will not happen. Your thoughts/experience here?
Unfortunately, that has been an intermittent and unpredictable issue for many years. The best practice is to open a Flying Blue account NOW, before you need it, to let it season and age.
There are many people who are able to transfer points into Flying Blue and ticket without issue, but when it doesn’t work it’s a major pain as Gary illustrates.
In my case, I opened an Air France/KLM account long before I intended to use it. In fact, I opened a fake account to use just for searching availability (years ago, some people claimed that if you ran too many availability searches you might run into this — I doubt that’s actually true, but I created the fake account to avoid that just in case).
I created the real account long before I intended to use it. Then I credited a SkyTeam flight to it before transferring any points — it just worked out that I was taking a paid flight before I ever needed to use Flying Blue miles. A couple of months after that paid flight, I made my first transfer into Flying Blue and made a redemption for two family members. I messed up online and reversed one passenger’s first and last name and had to call in for help. That reservation got fixed (with the name written correctly) and ticketed without issue. I haven’t had any problems since — but that’s just my experience…which won’t mean much to you if your experience ends up differently.
It’s somewhat of a leap of faith with Flying Blue. I think the number of people who never have a problem is greater than the number of people who do have a problem for what it’s worth. I have helped friends open a Flying Blue account and transfer points into it from Chase and book a ticket all on the same day without issue, so it certainly can work out OK. If I were in your shoes, I’d probably just transfer in the points and expect it to work properly. It should work OK.