Air France KLM Flying Blue 50% Off Awards Now Available Through March

by Gary Leff

Air France KLM’s Flying Blue is an American Express and Starwood Preferred Guest transfer partner. And while Delta isn’t able to access their business class award seats through at least early June, they’re even discounting those seats at half off on certain routes. (Although transatlantic flights do incur fuel surcharges via Flying Blue.)

The new dates are rolling out across the different language and country sites, they’re not fully up yet on the US-English page, but the new awards are valid for travel through March 26th rather than just for a couple of months out.

Intra-Europe awards are available in coach only.

  • Europe 1 – Europe 1 for 7500 points each way
  • Europe 1 – Europe 2 for 9375 points each way
  • Europe 1 – Europe 3 for 11,250 points each way

Here’s the definition of the different Europe zones:

  • Europe 1: Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom
  • Europe 2: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden
  • Europe 3: Albania, Algeria, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Canary Islands, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Western Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Tunisia, Ukraine.

KLM has North America coach awards at half-price (12,500 miles each way) between all of Europe and Atlanta and Washington Dulles. In business class the only North American destination is Havana.

Air France has North America coach awards at half-price (12,500 miles each way) between all of Europe and Los Angeles, Miami, New York JFK, and San Francisco. Business class is available between Europe and Montreal or Toronto.

These are really useful for intra-Europe travel, and for transatlantic travel in business class, even at half the points paying fuel surcharges for coach isn’t a great deal in my view. Business class transatlantic becomes an amazing deal when American Express Membership Rewards runs a transfer bonus as they do from time to time.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Is there an easy-access way to check AF-KLM award availability without a Flying Blue account or EF access? I’ll join and transfer miles if I find the space I need, but can’t access availability…. Thanks for the post!

  2. @Carl – AirFrance.us is the easiest place to search but Delta has been showing different inventory lately, you CAN check AF/KL award space at Delta.com though it’s not always reliable. Why not just open a Flying Blue account and search at airfrance.us? You don’t need miles in the account to search.

  6. Gary,

    (1) So what is the discounted biz class award rate between YYZ/YUL and Europe?
    (2) No discounts for intra-North American one-way awards, correct?
    (3) Can you link to a full Flying Blue award chart? There appears to be nothing on their site, which others have commented on.

  7. Flying Blue also has a promotion where you can buy 40,000 miles and receive a 20,000 bonus now through 12/31/12. I ran through my numbers for my summer vacation plans: purchase a ticket outright $1215, purchase points including bonus $1213….not a good deal.

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