Redeem Just 11,000 Miles to Europe – Book in June for August/September Travel

New Air France points pricing is live today. Some awards are more expensive, some less expensive. Instead of a hidden award chart they have a calculator.

It’s interesting how this plays out with their promo awards, which are now out for June booking and August/September travel.

Historically one of the great values in the Air France KLM Flying Blue program, has been their ‘promo awards’ — a rotating set of cities for discounted travel. You can fly from any featured city through Paris (if Air France) or Amsterdam (if KLM) to anywhere in Europe for fewer miles.

Once upon a time they were an amazing value, one way business class was normally 50,000 miles and selected cities were 50% off. More recently the ‘normal’ cost has been 62,500 miles and the discounts have been smaller.


Copyright: radututa / 123RF Stock Photo

The number of cities chosen each month for travel to and from North America has shrunk as well. For the last two months there weren’t any North American cities at all.

Now that June’s promo awards are live there are two cities available, coach only.

It’s interesting that you can fly Chicago to Europe for 11,000 miles each way. That’s coach, but it’s still a great deal since fuel surcharges are modest on economy awards. That really stretches the miles. American Express, Chase, and Citibank points all transfer to Flying Blue.

About Gary Leff

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 »

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Comments

  1. There’s currently a problem transferring points from Chase (and I was told AE also) to Flying Blue. The problem is at Flying Blue and I was told they have no idea when the problem will be resolved. Be aware.

  2. Hi, does this discount reflect on the final page? Found a departure for 22k miles, but can’t seem to find an arrival flight?

  3. Gary, I think they changed the way their promo worked as it relates to “Europe 1,2,3” (guess it’s no accident that they now call it just “Europe”, instead of the previous zones 1-3…)

    Just priced out a CDG-HAV and got the promo award price of 13,500 miles. When pricing TLV-CDG-HAV – on the exact same day, incl. said CDG-HAV flight, it gives me 27,000 miles. I tried other routes with similar results.
    Also, the design of the promo awards section is quite different, and more vague. So this leads me to believe something foul is going on here…

  4. @dude26

    Yes that’s the new way of pricing for miles now on the rewards side.
    It is not anymore by zone but depends on your departure airport and your final arrival one and the number of flights…

    A bit disappointing indeed.

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