Tag Archives for flying blue.
On Friday it was possible to book transatlantic business class award tickets on Air France for as little as 13,500 Flying Blue miles each way and in fact in some cases for just 1,500 points (!).
This was an error in pricing. Some people who booked it will get to travel, while others will have their plans cancelled.
Air France KLM’s Flying Blue is the best frequent flyer program in the SkyTeam alliance, far better than Delta SkyMiles. And it just keeps getting better. A decade ago they were following Delta’s lead. Now they’re moving in the opposite direction. Lower award prices for business class.
Air France KLM insists Flying Blue won’t be spun off. CEO Ben Smith was President of Air Canada when their relationship with Aimia which ran the spun-off Aeroplan program went south, and the carrier laid out plans to bring the loyalty program back in house. While some analysts see spinning off loyalty programs as a way of ‘unlocking value’ in fact spinoffs create frictions which destroy value.
Bilt Rewards May 1st ‘Rent Day’ promotions includes a 100% bonus on points transfers to Air France KLM Flying Blue. Before Bilt ran a 100% bonus to Hawaiian Airlines there had never been a double points transfer bonus to an airline where points already transferred one-to-one. And now they’ve done it again.
And they’ve coordinated with Flying Blue to make May’s discounted ‘promo awards’ especially lucrative from North America. I haven’t seen such a great set of award discounts from Flying Blue in years.
The best way to search Air France and KLM award space is on the AirFrance.us website. You hunt and peck a day at a time for availability. But they have a hidden award calendar and all you need to do to see it is leave your travel dates blank.
Ben Lipsey, head of Air France KLM Flying Blue who got his start in the airline industry by messaging Air Canada’s President on FlyerTalk to score an internship when he was 20 years old and eventually moved over with Ben Smith when he became CEO of Air France KLM, gave an interview where he talked about the importance of the program’s value proposition for Americans.
I still see Flying Blue as the most useful SkyTeam program, with better award availability on Air France and KLM for their own members than is offered to partners and mostly reasonable pricing when saver inventory is available. The addition of free stopovers on one way awards is great, and modest pricing and region adjustments are things most will be able to live with.
Air France KLM Flying Blue offers promo awards which are specific routes discounted 25% – 50% for a month.
The Bank of America-issued U.S. credit card for Air France KLM Flying Blue has an offer that’s better than any I’ve seen before. And it’s interesting for more than just the bonus miles. It opens up elite status and potentially first class awards, too.
I recently wrote about my reasons for not transferring points speculative into Air France KLM’s Flying Blue program – even when there’s a great bonus to do so – I explained that it’s because of their expiration policy.
What I failed to point out is that the official policy isn’t always enforced, in fact I was able to extend my miles by two years without taking a flight or putting a charge on their credit card.
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 »
