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Late in 2023, Flying Blue — the mileage and loyalty program for KLM and Air France — standardized minimum award rates between North America and Europe. After this change, travelers can pay as few as 20,000 miles each way in economy or 50,000 miles each way in business for flights between the U.S. and Europe.
However, these are just the starting rates. Flying Blue award prices vary using dynamic pricing based on demand. If you want to lock in a ticket at these rates, you'll want to know about a trick to finding the cheapest Flying Blue award prices.
Here's how to use the Flying Blue award calendar to find the cheapest award flights available.
How To Access the Flying Blue Award Calendar
Accessing the Flying Blue open dates award calendar is quite straightforward. On the award search screen, you need to do (or not do) two things:
- Don't select a date, regardless of if you're booking one-way or round-trip.
- Search for only one passenger. Searching for multiple passengers prompts Flying Blue to require a travel date or dates, which negates the first requirement.
Following these two steps should yield a calendar view of results.
Using the Flying Blue award calendar, travelers can easily view the lowest award prices for their itinerary of choice for more than half a year at a time. If you look at the calendar above, you will notice that the 30th and 31st are green — highlighting that they are the dates with the cheapest awards that month. Along the top, you can see the other months with the lowest award prices for each of those months as well.
Just note that Flying Blue will sometimes return a blank calendar after you go through this process.
If this happens, you'll need to use an alternative method to prompt the rates to show up.
Alternative Flying Blue flexible date calendar trick
If you don't see rates when leaving the date field blank, try entering a date that is too far in the future instead. For example, if you're searching on June 26, 2024, enter June 30, 2025. When you search, you'll get the following error message: “Sorry, there are no flights available in the current month. You can view flights for the next available month below.”
However, you'll also get a calendar showing award rates for that month, with tabs showing the cheapest rates for other months:
Why Does This Matter?
Flexible travel dates allow travelers the best chance to score the best flights using points and miles. It also helps travelers take advantage of promotional pricing, such as the monthly Flying Blue Promo Rewards. Accessing a calendar view of dates — including easily checking several months in a matter of seconds — makes the award search process that much more efficient. This is so much better than seeing just one day or week at a time.
Our Take
The Flying Blue open dates award calendar makes searching award space for desired routes a breeze. Whether a journey requires a one-way or round-trip itinerary, accessing a calendar of dates improves efficiency. It also increases the value of your points and miles by letting you potentially redeem fewer of miles for the same trip.
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