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Air France–KLM Flying Blue has added two new first-class partner awards to its site. While you can generally book economy and business class awards across Sky Team partners, first-class awards are much rarer and vary by the airlines' willingness to share their premium cabins with partners or those without elite status.
Some airlines release first-class space to partners, and some do not — like Air France. However, in positive news, you can now redeem your Flying Blue miles to book first-class awards on China Eastern and Garuda Indonesia.
Garuda Indonesia First Class Partner Awards
The main European destination served by Garuda Indonesia is Amsterdam. We found several options when searching for award space in December 2023.
Awards will set you back 275,000 miles plus $217 in taxes and fees. While this is expensive, it is still reasonably good value for an outstanding first-class hard and soft product. Availability was good for the day we checked: Three seats were available for that price.
Remember that while Garuda is an international carrier, it operates almost exclusively in Asia and Australia. The airline's only major long-haul routes are to Amsterdam plus Jeddah and Medina in Saudi Arabia. The airline does not operate any routes to North or South America.
One thing to note is that we only found first-class award space on the Amsterdam route. With a cash price of $3,943, you'll get a redemption value of 1.35 cents per mile.
Wide-open availability
Typically, first-class award space is like a needle in a haystack, and you may find the odd seat here and there. However, this does not seem to be the case with Garuda's first-class awards with Flying Blue. We found plenty of awards in January 2024. Again, these include multiple seats on the same flight, which is ideal for families.
Looking further ahead through March 2024, there was plenty of space available. Again, several flights offer multiple award seats.
The only issue is that booking multiple seats at 275,000 apiece can get expensive.
This plentiful award space is not only on the outbound routes. Again, we found plenty of space on the return route from Amsterdam to Jakarta as far out as March 2024.
On this route, you'll pay the same 275,000 miles per passenger but $225.60 in taxes and fees.
Related: Do Air France/KLM Flying Blue Miles Expire?
China Eastern First Class Partner Awards
You also can book China Eastern first-class awards using Flying Blue miles. However, the availability is much less generous. We found availability from Frankfurt to Shanghai in early December 2023 for 130,500 miles plus $310.90 in taxes and fees.
Although China Eastern’s first class is nothing to write home about, this is still an outstanding deal. 130,500 points for an 11-hour flight in first class is excellent value, whichever way you look at it — especially when the cash cost is $14,068. That's a redemption value of 10.5¢ per mile!
Related: Air France–KLM Flying Blue Awards Permit Free Stopovers on Partner Redemptions
Route and Inventory Availability
The situation with China Eastern availability is the polar opposite of Garuda Indonesia. We had an extensive look for first-class award space on some of the major routes operated by the airline and could find no space. These include destinations such as London, Paris, New York, Sydney, and Los Angeles.
Interestingly, the only route we found with plenty of space was Frankfurt to Shanghai. However, even then, this route was not bountiful with space. The few available seats were in early to mid-December 2023. Beyond those dates into 2024, we could not find any award space, which is odd for first-class awards several months in the future.
Could We See Reciprocal Awards?
Considering how closely Air France guards its La Première awards, it is virtually impossible that this will result in any reciprocal awards. Air France does not let non-elite members of its program book La Première first-class awards. Therefore, there is little to no chance of the airline letting members of other programs book these awards.
Boosting Your Flying Blue Mileage Balance
When it comes to boosting your Flying Blue Mileage balance to book an award, you are spoiled for choice. You can buy Flying Blue points, but the program is a transfer partner for every major point currency on the market. This makes it the perfect spot to consolidate small balances to book one premium cabin award that you cannot book from an individual points pool.
However, remember to keep your eyes open for the odd transfer bonus. That can significantly improve the value of your Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Capital One Miles, Citi ThankYou Points, Marriott Bonvoy points, and Bilt Rewards points.
Related: Which Points Transfer To Flying Blue?
Our Take
More uses of your miles are always welcome news. While the new Garuda first-class awards are wide open on one route, they are not fantastic value. That said, it is still a decent first-class product, so make of that what you may.
The China Eastern redemptions are another picture. The pricing is good value, and the airline has a much more developed route network, even though the product is not as good as some others. However, while this is useful, the rare availability and routing option make this a much more difficult option to use and get value from.
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