Air France KLM’s Flying Blue program has posted details of its 50% off promo awards for travel in May and June which will be bookable starting April 29.
You can book discounted awards for travel between specific cities in North America and all of Europe. (Promo awards also include travel between Europe and other regions of the world, but here I focus just on North America where most of my readers are — sorry folks reading in South America and Asia!)
The only cities offering discounted business class are:
- Chicago to and from Europe via Amsterdam on KLM
- Montreal to and from Europe via Paris on Air France
- New York JFK to and from Europe via Madrid on Air Europa (twice-weekly service)
These can be booked from the starting cities above to any destination in Europe for 25,000 miles each way.
That is, you can fly from New York or Montreal or Chicago to anywhere in “Europe 1/2/3” which are:
- 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.
I don’t generally like the rest of the rewards because Flying Blue does add fuel surcharges to most redemptions and even when redeeming coach at half off you’re still paying much of the cost of a coach ticket in ‘taxes and fees’.
But at half off, and if there’s award space, it can even be worthwhile buying a ticket to one of these gateway cities to start the award.
American Express points transfer instantly to Flying Blue, in my experience.
I’m still getting the list for travel through 4/30 via that link.
I get that list ALSO.
If you look closely they show both time frames at the moment
Sorry forgot to add …but only up to April 30 is bookable at the moment
As I noted in my post the promo awards for may/june aren’t bookable until the 29th
@Gary — apologies, I now see that the new promo awards are listed among the ones good until 4/30. My bad!
Gary: Considering AF and BA have similar fuel surcharges, which, in your opinion is the better airline to transfer into. Assume LAX-EUROPE business class being my preferred usage.
@Rick L – in general Air France probably has better business class availability, British Airways has the better seat (and first class is possible, whereas it’s only offered to Air France elites and at double miles)
How long it usually takes to transfer SPG points to Flyingblue?