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Flying Blue—the shared loyalty program of Air France and KLM—just launched a new buy miles sale. Now through July 9, 2021, members can buy Flying Blue miles with up to an 80% bonus or a 45% discount.
This translates into the ability to buy miles for as little as 1.51 euro cents (or 1.80 US cents at the current exchange rate) per mile.
A Note on Buying Points
Before we look into some of the possible value, it's important to first recognize that buying miles should typically be a last resort. Loyalty programs tend to sell miles at a price point far higher than the redeemable value they can deliver. Consequently, without a discount, you're better off saving your money and building your balance using other (cheaper) methods.
However, there are a few unique scenarios where buying miles can make sense. If you're just on the cusp of having enough miles for a sweet redemption, buying the remaining miles can be quick and easy. Moreover, if you have your heart set on a fancy premium cabin, buying enough miles for an award redemption is likely cheaper than paying the cash rate. Lastly, if you're struggling to meet a minimum spending requirement, buying miles can be a nice way to reach the target via an investment in future travel.
Key Terms to Buy Flying Blue Miles
- The promotional 80% bonus or 45% discount offer is available for mileage purchases through July 9, 2021.
- Members must purchase at least 4,000 miles in one transaction to receive any bonus or discount.
- Flying Blue elite members may receive a maximum of 300,000 bonus miles. Explorer (non-elite) members may receive up to 100,000 bonus miles.
- Flying Blue elite members can purchase an unlimited amount of miles throughout the calendar year. Explorer members can purchase up to a maximum of 100,000 miles per calendar year. However, some non-elite members can buy 300,000 miles during this promotion.
- Miles will be deposited within 72 hours of purchase.
- You may withdraw your full mileage purchase (no partial withdrawals) for any reason within 14 days of purchase.
- The full terms and conditions are available here.
Flying Blue sells miles in units of 2,000 at the cost of €55 (~$66 at current exchange rates) per unit. You'll get bonus miles on top of this base rate depending on how many miles you buy.
If you're targeted for the 80% bonus offer, you can buy miles at the following rates:
- 4,000 to 10,000 miles: 55% bonus
- 12,000 to 18,000 miles: 65% bonus
- 20,000+ miles: 80% bonus
Members targeted for the 45% discount offer can buy miles with the following structure:
- 4,000 to 10,000 miles: 35% off
- 12,000 to 18,000 miles: 40% off
- 20,000+ miles: 45% off
Opportunities Through Buying Flying Blue Miles
Flying Blue is a powerhouse loyalty program full of lucrative sweet spots. In addition to utilizing some unique geographical interpretations to determine award rates, it also offers monthly award discounts for spontaneous getaways.
Let's look at a few examples where buying miles can save you money compared to paying a cash rate.
Los Angeles — Tel Aviv in Air France Business Class
- Mileage Rate: 106,000 miles + $551.44 round-trip
- Typical Cash Price: $3,212.66 round-trip
- Redemption Rate: 2.51 cents per mile
- Cost to Purchase Miles (at 1.8¢ per mile): $1,908
Atlanta — London in Virgin Atlantic Business Class
- Mileage Rate: 53,000 miles + $236 one-way
- Typical Cash Price: $4,151 round-trip
- Redemption Rate: 3.5 cents per mile (based on half the round-trip price)
- Cost to Purchase Miles (at 1.8¢ per mile): $954 one-way
Los Angeles — Paris in Air France ‘La Premiere' First Class
- Mileage Rate: 220,000 miles one-way
- Typical Cash Price: $11,223 round-trip
- Redemption Rate: 5.1 cents per mile
- Cost to Purchase Miles (220K at 1.8¢ per mile): $3,960
To be fair, this example is more of a proof of concept rather than a viable option. But, since Air France's ‘La Premiere' is said to be one of the world's best first-class experiences, I felt it was worth mentioning.
As I mentioned in the ‘Offer Details' section, to buy more than 100,000 Flying Blue miles in a year, you have to have Flying Blue elite status. Likewise, to book Air France's chic first-class product with miles, you need to have at least Flying Blue Gold status.
Flying Blue elites can score up to 300,000 bonus miles through this promotion. After the 80% bonus, elite members can buy up to a total of 540,000 miles at 1.82¢ US per mile. You'll still have to pay thousands for the award, but you'd save thousands of dollars compared to paying the astronomical cash rate for this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Notes on Price Comparisons
- I've based all of these examples on the minimum mileage required between these destinations. You can find this using Flying Blue's award calculator.
- In some cases, I've opted to compare one-way award prices to half the rate of a round-trip cash fare. This is because one-way cash fares are often much more expensive than round-trips. Since I wanted to avoid using misleading cent per point values, I based my calculations on the more conservative price.
Maximize Your Purchase
Like many other loyalty programs, Flying Blue partners with Points.com to process mileage purchases. As Points.com is a third party, the purchase won't code as ‘travel‘, and likely won't trigger any travel-oriented category bonus.
With this in mind, the best credit card to use is one that bonuses online purchases or a card optimized for everyday spending. It's worth noting that since Flying Blue mileage purchases are charged in Euros, mileage purchases likely will process as a foreign transaction. If you want to maximize your earnings while avoiding a foreign transaction fee, you should consider using one of these cards:
- Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card
- Barclaycard Arrival Plus® World Elite Mastercard®
- Discover it® Miles
Other Ways to Earn Flying Blue Miles
Flying Blue is one of the few loyalty programs that partners with every major transferable currency. Consequently, Flying Blue miles are some of the easiest to accrue via credit card sign-up bonuses and spending. Simply transfer the miles you need whenever you want to complete a redemption.
- Chase Ultimate Rewards Points — 1:1 transfer ratio (transfers process immediately)
- American Express Membership Rewards Points — 1:1 transfer ratio (transfers process immediately)
- Citi ThankYou Points — 1:1 transfer ratio (transfers process immediately)
- Capital One Miles — 4:3 transfer ratio (transfers process immediately)
- Marriott Bonvoy Points — 3:1 transfer ratio plus a 5,000-mile bonus for every 60,000 Bonvoy points transferred (transfers typically take one to three days to process)
Additionally, Flying Blue partners with Bank of America to offer a co-branded credit card. The Air France KLM World Elite Mastercard® currently offers a respectable 50,000-mile sign-up bonus after you make $2,000 or more in purchases within the first 90 days of your account opening, as well as 1.5X miles per dollar spent. While not a terrible offer, you may be better off sticking to cards that earn transferable bank currency. This would offer more flexible redemption options while also providing similar earning abilities.
Final Thoughts
We don't see buy miles promotions from Flying Blue all that often, and this one brings a lot to the table. It's certainly worth considering if you need to plan travel soon. However, you should consider transferring points to Flying Blue before buying miles. And thankfully Flying Blue miles are among the easiest to acquire without paying for them—thanks to its many transfer partners.
Are you buying Flying Blue miles for 1.8¢ each?
The comments on this page are not provided, reviewed, or otherwise approved by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
Excellent news. This sounds like a great deal. It’s been difficult to travel nowadays with but I think I will strongly consider this opportunity. Looking forward to travelling soon! Thanks for the advice 🙂
This is a pretty sweet deal! Especially if you’re in the situation like me that I haven’t got on a plane for a while and my miles are expiring soon. In addition if you live in the Netherlands, Amex has the flying blue credit card they can give you flying blue miles.
This is a great offer. Too bad we used most of our earned miles not so long ago… Still, it’s worth passing the word to our friends befor the offer expires! (it would have been better to keep the offering for at least six weeks).
This is, alas, THE best purchase offering from Fying Blue that I’ve ever seen! Thank your, Award Wallet, for posting it.
Not a bad offer.
Personally I have already some number of Flying Blue miles, the people who need some miles to redeem some flights could take part in this promotion.
The only thing that I hope is to see this offer some other time apart the more traditional 30-50% bonus offers.
This is a pretty good deal, definitely going to try and score on this, ~$4k for first class, cant beat that.
Does AF have a COVID extension for miles expiration?
Yes, Flying Blue has paused miles expiration until the end of 2021. We have a complete guide on this here: https://awardwallet.com/blog/airlines-hotels-suspended-point-expiration/
Excellent deal, it’s a good promotion. I need to fly from Montreal to Paris in october. Thanks
This is certainly not an occurence that happens often. Still I dont really have travel plans at the moment so I will pass for now.
I got this when I needed to extend the life of my miles with them. I love this offer from AF! I was able to get the bonus from them and some bonus points through a shopping portal. It was great.
Maybe they should launch another 100% bonus promotion when the situation finally stabilizes for real.
Big fan of flying blue miles but I wish they would do a chase transfer bonus!
Great bonus opportunity, but as I’ve no plans to travel internationally until (most) borders open back up consistently, leaving this one on the shelf. I’d love to do a Flying Blue redemption in the future, but will just transfer points from Chase/Amex.
This is definitely a very attractive deal, especially if FlyingBlue starts to bring back their “monthly promo awards”. Having said that, given the ease of transfer partners to FB, it may still not be very compelling to buy these miles if you already have a stack of TY/UR/MR points to use.
Looks like a sweet deal if u wanna fly across the pond in the front of the plane! That ATL-CDG deal at 53K miles – even with the $236 surcharge – is not too shabby…..worth a look if you’re planning a Europe trip soon.
If they offered more N. American destinations in their periodic discounts, this bonus would be worth a second look for me personally.
Seems like a pretty good promotion. Do you this offer is better than what you can currently get with aeroplan? Also, how valuable will these points be given travel restrictions?
Depends on your travel plans. I like Aeroplan better than Air France personally, but both have some great sweet spots.
Super, super reminder!! I received an e-mail from KLM but didn’t really pay attention to the treat. Will buy the extra
miles I need to fly from Paris to Buenos Aires this September. Thanks lot.
I have bought AF miles when they gave a 100% bonus for even 2000mi. Mainly to extend the life of my miles but I felt it was a good buy at the time. I think it’ll be a good base to add from my credit cards. I like that AF can be easily gotten from credit card partners. Plus, they have options that are great to use miles on. I love that they often have discounted mileage tickets.
I have never buy miles in any company, but I will consider that in my nex trip. The offer looks like atractive.
pretty good deal if you could actually travel anywhere right now
super feliz y contenta!
It’s a helpful adventure consider to buy miles for a future trip. The pandemic atmosphere needs fresh air, planning a future vacation.
Whilst this is a good promotion unfortunately I’ve never been able to find any redemptions that work for me. The tax and charges seem to make them poor value.
I wish they would have a transfer bonus from chase. That would be very helpful!
Great tip to make sure you buy miles from them with a card that will maximize regular category spend but has no foreign transaction fees. I’d be so upset if I used my Freedom unlimited or Blue for Business and was charged fees.
So tempting but I’m not sure it’s something I can commit to until Europe opens up. This is a really solid promo.
A good bonus to build up a points balance. I hesitate to build up a big balance with an upcoming purchase due to the risk of devaluations.
Are your comparisons including taxes and fees? On both the cash price and miles prices? I am unable to look up the miles price atm as I don’t currently have any miles.
We did include the rather-high taxes and fees in all comparisons. That’s part of what drives the redemption rate for Flying Blue miles down.
Also, for finding the miles price, you can use the MILES PRICE ESTIMATOR on this page: https://www.flyingblue.com/en/flights/reward-tickets. Unfortunately, this doesn’t show the taxes/fees on these redemptions though.
Seems like 100% bonus is becoming the norm now, might have to up that to get my attention going forward.
never find any sweet spot in SkyTeam.
I feel as if I’ve haven’t seen a promotion with such universal enthusiasm in the comments for some time. I’ve been patiently waiting for Covid to produce such offers.
Excellent deal! Even better if the miles are purchased with the World Elite Mastercard.
Wow this is a very good promotion.
I’m going to buy some this time.
If you need the points, sure it’s a good deal but I think cheaper to transfer Chase UR points
Thanks, great post!. Is there any benefit if I buy the miles with an American Express Card?
This is a really attractive offer. Flying Blue also restarted their promo awards so if you can combine this deal with a promo award that works for you, that would an excellent proposition, well assuming that you can ACTUALLY travel in this COVID-19 world.
Wow, a 14 day withdrawal period. That is terrific in case you cannot pull the trigger quickly enough on an award deal you have your eyes on but has now disappeared. Thank you!
This is SO tempting!!! I actually have plans for AF miles so I think I will be taking advantage of this promo. Now MR needs to have a bonus miles promo and it’ll be perfect! lol!
anyone think there will be no end in sight? now 100% bonus, next month 120%?
Actually, I don’t think there will be a lot more big promos going on bc as the vaccine rolls out (we’re getting our 2nd doses this week as are a lot of people we know) and the pharmacies will have them soon, then it is going to be wide open running I do believe. Even though people are supposed to still wear masks, I’m sure many won’t and the virus will rage on in many places, but those who have been vaccinated will be allowed to roam so the motivation to get it will increase and travel will according increase, promos will slow down.