Air France KLM’s Flying Blue is the best frequent flyer program in SkyTeam. Some even call them best overall. They’ve actually reduced the prices of their best awards in order to appeal to American customers with bank points to transfer, and as a result this year should issue more awards to U.S. frequent flyers than to Europeans even.
- Air France KLM makes more award space available to their own members than they do to partner frequent flyer programs like Delta
- It’s easy to get their miles, because they partner with all of the major transferrable currencies like Chase, American Express, Citibank, Capital One and Bilt. There are frequent transfer bonuses too so your points go even farther.
- Free stopovers are permitted on one way awards as well.
KLM Business Class
KLM Lounge Amsterdam
However lately there have seemed to be fewer 50,000 point business class awards between the U.S. and Europe – at least if you’re looking to fly non-stop to Paris or Amsterdam.
However Find Flights For Me reminds that an important tip for finding the best award pricing with Air France KLM Flying Blue is to remember that they often charge different prices for different destinations, even when traveling on the same flights across the Atlantic.
- A flight from New York to Paris can cost less when adding a connecting flight beyond Paris to another destination in Europe.
- If you don’t check bags, you can even throw away that extra flight segment – or at a minimum remember when searching for availability, the usual advice to search just the transatlantic flights and then find your connections gets reversed. Search New York to Madid, not just New York to Paris or Amsterdam.
Air France Business Class
haven’t seen many saver awards from the US to Paris or Amsterdam recently (50k points one way). Air France and KLM appear to want you to fly somewhere else and not visit those cities.
Instead, look at “married segment” awards where pricing changes depending on where you start and stop.
Spain appears to be a winner here where there is much more availability at the 50-55k awards whereas flying to Paris or Amsterdam on those same days will ask for 100k+.
Dates are generally November through early April, then July to August. Some availability in September depending on route.
Flights are still through Paris or Amsterdam, but a short layover before heading to Spain. Popular cities include Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, and Mallorca pricing at 50-60k one way.
Amex has a 20% transfer bonus. So only 42k-50k Amex points needed to take advantage.
Pro tip. Combine this trip with booking a cheap Iberia award that prices at 34-50k Avios before any transfer bonus.
When searching for Air France and KLM awards you’ll find dates that save you the most points by using their ‘hidden’ award calendar. I usually just enter the last available calendar date to search for awards and this should bring up the award calendar. It’s also worked to leave travel dates blank, and to edit the results URL to replace ‘flights’ with ‘open-dates’.
This is true even with ExpertFlyer searches/subscription, FWIW. If you search for “classic”/partner business class, you won’t see availability on direct flights, but will with connections.
Ditto with transpacific flights on American. Rarely see Sydney to lax for cheap but Sydney to phoenix will open a lot of dates
I agree that availability is usually better than other FF programs but once you factor in the surcharges of $350 each way, those 50000 points become 85000 points in other programs. United has business class tickets for 80000 for mileage plus or card members with no surcharges. And American is usually sub-70000, so is Alaska. Availability isn’t very good, but point-wise it’s about the same.