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Air France / KLM Flying Blue is out with its April 2024 Promo Rewards. This month’s list covers bookings made in April for travel through September 30th, 2024. Since this covers the peak summer travel period (in an Olympic year when Paris is hosting!), it is not surprising to see that there are no deals on business class awards, but nonetheless economy class travelers form the US can score a few deals.
The Deal
- Air France / KLM Flying Blue is out with its April 2024 Promo Rewards. Here’s the list of deals between the US / Canada and Europe:
- Economy class:
- Europe to/from Atlanta (ATL) starting at 15K miles
- Europe to/from Chicago (ORD) starting at 15K miles
- Europe to/from Boston (BOS) starting at 15K miles
- Europe to/from Washington, DC (IAD) starting at 15K miles
- Europe to/from Ottawa (YOW) starting at 15K miles
- Premium Economy:
- Europe to/from Quebec (YQB) starting at 17.5K0 miles
- Business Class:
- Europe to/from Montreal (YUL) — starting at 37,500 miles
- Direct link to this deal
Key Terms
- Valid for bookings made between April 1, 2024 and April 30, 2024
- Valid for travel until September 30, 2024
- No Miles or XP can be earned on reward tickets.
- Reward tickets are subject to airport and security taxes and carrier surcharges. These taxes and surcharges are not covered by Miles and must be paid separately.
- You’ll need to contact customer service to book if you are travelling with an infant (under the age of 2) and for minors travelling alone.
- Promo rewards are subject to availability. Displayed Miles prices for Long Haul promo destinations are for flights from/to Europe, the lowest possible price from/to any European destination is shown.
Quick Thoughts
This list won’t be exciting for those primarily interested in using their miles to fly in premium cabins, though it certainly might come in handy for those trying to plan a summertime trip to Europe late in the game. I would expect availability to be tight around the Olympics, though I’ve personally booked a couple of flights to/from Europe recently for travel during Olympic dates (though, unfortunately, not for the Olympics this year, though attending the Olympic games is an absolute bucket list item for me!).
Availability isn’t wide open here, but I did find dates to Europe even during peak summer Olympics time on KLM.
These deals get even better with a transfer bonus, like the 25% transfer bonus that we wrote about earlier today. If you’re able to take advantage of a 25% transfer bonus, you’d need to transfer just 12K miles per passenger in each direction. You’re still on the hook for taxes & carrier-imposed surcharges, but that can still be quite a reasonable deal.
I just booked two one-ways for my family to go to Turkey, but the Olympics are never on my radar, and I remembered after-the-fact. Getting from ATL to IST was very straightforward, but there’s zero Promo Reward availability from IST through to the USA in August, and I’ll have to position closer to Eastern Europe to find a connecting flight back home.
Nick, what does your gut tell you about the likelihood that WF will offer FB transfer bonuses in line with Amex, Chase, Citi, etc.? Thanks.
I obviously don’t know and I have no inside knowledge there at all, but I would absolutely bet on it without hesitation. Wells Fargo clearly knows the game — I think that the launch partners they announced demonstrate an understanding of the programs that work for miles enthusiasts. I also assume that those transfer bonuses are probably not funded (or at the very least not entirely funded) by the banks themselves but rather I assume that a program like Air France has a strong interest in tapping into the US consumer market and therefore they likely fund transfer bonuses (maybe not actually paying Wells Fargo to do it, but offering a discount to them on buying the miles).
I always say this: remember that the major US Airlines make massive amounts of money by selling miles to the banks (AA makes more money selling miles to banks than they do flying customers!). Foreign airline programs want access to a piece of that pie — so whether they are selling miles at a discount to the bank in order to sell more volume or they are primarily interested in getting more US customers to join their program and make a redemption so they will transfer more points to their programs in the future, either way I think the foreign programs like Flying Blue see those transfer bonuses as a win.
So I’d be very surprised if WF doesn’t offer transfer bonuses. I think they want to compete and programs like AF want to play ball.
Thank you, sir.