Guide to Air France’s Flying Blue Rewards

Guide to Flying Blue

Flying Blue is Air France and KLM’s (the Netherlands former national carrier) reward program. It is one of the major airlines with the most connections with major credit card issuers including American Express, Bilt, Capital One, Chase, and Citi. As a result of these partnerships, it is easier to build up large rewards balances on Flying Blue than virtually any other airline. In addition, Flying Blue allows you to pool points across family members without paying a transfer fee (see link below for details).

Air France often has extremely (relatively speaking) cheap business class reward redemptions from the US to Europe and vice versa. American Express, Bilt, and Chase all periodically have bonuses on points transfers to Flying Blue of 25% to as high as 150% (Bilt). Another great feature of Flying Blue is a 25% discount on reward tickets booked for children when they are purchased with an adult’s ticket. This can be huge when you are booking for a large family! Air France/KLM’s planes tend to be decent and as a (mostly) French airline, the food is great. 

One method I have used to flush out cheap redemptions back from Europe, is to look at regional airports like Bordeaux and Lyon which often have cheap business class flights that require a connection through Paris. In these cases the direct flight from Paris will often cost 5x more than completing the same route but having the regional city as your starting point. For example, on 08/24/24 as show in the screenshots below, Paris to LA business class tickets were around 714k miles plus $1,290 vs Lyon to LA at $175k miles plus $1,290 for a family of four.  Note that you must always actually take the first flight or you will lose the right to your seat on the connecting flight.

Also another note of caution, some people report “phantom rewards” where a reward looks real until you try and book it only to find out it no longer exists. This occurs more frequently when you are booking through a partner airline and the two airlines’ systems are not talking to one another. I have never had this occur to me, but try to click into the flight as far as you can to verify it is live before transferring points, just in case. 

Lyon to LAX Business Class for 2 adults and 2 children on August 23rd (you have to stay overnight in Paris then take the 8:45AM flight to LAX)

VS 

Paris to LAX Business Class for 2 adults and 2 children on August 23rd and the same flight from Paris at 8:45AM

A comprehensive guide to Flying Blue is available here: https://thepointsguy.com/guide/ultimate-guide-flying-blue/

How to combine points with Flying Blue: https://monkeymiles.boardingarea.com/how-to-combine-points-with-flying-blue-family-account-air-france-and-klm/

Sign up for flying Blue at the link below:

https://www.flyingblue.us