FlyingBlue is the rewards program of Air France and KLM. In the points and miles world it is a widely used program but a program that is new to me. After spending a few months as a member and now having made two bookings I’ve concluded there are some great deals but that significant caution is also called for.
Why can FlyingBlue be a great rewards program?
If you are looking at locations where Air France or KLM fly there can be some great deals – particularly if you are flying across the Atlantic between Europe and North America. For example my first booking with the program was a flight from Chicago to Paris in Economy during July 2024. That flight only cost 15,000 miles and $64 per person. Paying the equivalent of $214 to fly to Paris from the US during peak travel season is pretty amazing!
For me there are three main drivers of the value proposition of FlyingBlue and the well priced flights you can find.
- Good Base Rates – If you are flexible with dates FlyingBlue tends to have some flights that are attractively priced on quite a few routes that I’ve looked at. They also have availability on almost all days. That said, if it is a busy day, you can also see astronomical rates. That same Chicago to Paris flight currently varies from 20,000 miles to 62,500 miles on days in July 2024.
- Frequent Sales – Every month FlyingBlue runs promo rewards that typically discount base rates 25% or 50%. They run these promotions on a specific location and class of service. That’s how I purchased my Chicago to Paris tickets for 15,000 miles – they were running a 25% discount promo reward for Chicago to Europe in economy.
- Transfer Partners and Bonuses – A program like FlyingBlue isn’t useful if you can’t earn rewards with the program. Luckily the program is a transfer partner with American Express, Bilt, Capital One, Chase, and Citi. This makes it easy for US travelers to earn points with the program. What’s even better is that transfer bonuses are reasonably common. For example when I booked my tickets Chase was running a 25% bonus on transfers. That means it only cost me 12,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points per ticket!
Two other things are worth noting that I find valuable about the program. First is that Business class tickets can be very reasonably priced too. With promo rewards I’ve seen transatlantic flights as low as 35,000 points! Second is that FlyingBlue discounts children’s tickets by 25%, even off the promo rewards price!
Good Deals but Buyer Beware
My first booking from Chicago to Paris went great. I was able to do everything online and it worked perfectly.
Unfortunately, my second booking did not go well. For this booking I was planning to book two Business class flights from Tunis to Montreal. I had checked that there was space on multiple days at a cost of 96,250 miles and about $500.
I even clicked through the booking process as far as I could without miles in my FlyingBlue account to ensure there was availability. Seeing no errors, I transferred points from Chase and proceeded to book the tickets – and then after putting in passenger names I got a generic error message. I tried again – same thing. The error suggested calling FlyingBlue for assistance, so I did. After about ten minutes on hold I was talking to a representative who told me that there weren’t actually any tickets available on ANY of the dates they checked, despite what the website said. The cheapest option available was 120,000 points and $500. They said it wasn’t unusual for it to take multiple days for inventory to get updated to correctly reflect availability. I politely asked to have my Chase points refunded to my account given the “bait and switch”. They said they were unable to do so and insisted that their supervisor would be unable to assist with this either.
At this point I was frustrated. That said the agent I talked to was doing their best to be helpful. They suggested that they do have a miles and money option and said that I could book the two tickets I needed for 93,400 miles and about $700. I ended up saying yes, given that my Chase points were now stranded with FlyingBlue, and the agent quickly got the booking done.
Unfortunately the problems didn’t stop there. The charge came through on my credit card for $60 more than the agent quoted me. Luckily my Venture X card that I used to pay was set up to notify me of charges so I knew this while I was still on the phone with the agent. He apologized and said this was due to a phone booking fee that he had tried to waive for me and he wasn’t sure why it happened. He assured me that it would be refunded and I did indeed receive emails indicating these charges were going to be refunded within two weeks. (Update: After six weeks I called in as I had not been issued a refund and they said it could take up to three months.)
After 90 minutes on the phone I did end up getting tickets booked, but at a higher cost than advertised. I filed a complaint with the US Department of Transportation as I do think this amounts to deceptive practices. Unfortunately phantom award space is not that unusual in the frequent flier game. What was new to me was having to go so far through the booking process before discovering the tickets didn’t actually exist.
Lesson Learned
Don’t trust the initially displayed miles listed on FlyingBlue. If you are planning to book an award make sure you click through the point where you have entered passenger names and if that doesn’t work call in to verify availability if you are transferring a large number of points.
Tip: To see broad award availability on FlyingBlue such as in the photo above leave the “Departure Date” field empty.
