Air France's Flying Blue program has a fantastic deal for getting to/from Europe: for those based in the US, you can get business class tickets on Air France starting at just 50,000 points each way.
For a business class ticket that typically starts at around $3,000 USD roundtrip, being able to get to/from Europe starting at 100k pts total is a pretty fantastic deal. This guide article will cover the basics on how to find and book Air France business class tickets.
How Does Air France Price Its Flights?
Flying Blue, the conglomerate loyalty program for both Air France + KLM, prices its award flights dynamically, which means they can basically price a flight in whatever fashion they want. This sometimes means that just a one day difference in flight departure times could lead to a massive increase in point prices.
However, the saving grace of this pricing mechanism is that Flying Blue has a published tool that lets you price out the lowest possible miles prices for entry fares. Using this tool, we can see that Europe award flights to/from the contiguous 48 United States, Canada, and Mexico all cost 50,000 pts one way when flying on Air France or KLM. This presents significant opportunity to get a lot out of your points/miles if used properly.
The Air France Reward Maps tool is not currently available
How Do I Find These Flights?
While it's cool to see speculative bookings, it's better to know if these bookings are actually possible and how to actually find + book them.
Let's try finding New York to Paris on Air France business class for sometime in August 2024. Ideally, finding this for just 50,000 points one way would be a great deal.
Using The Air France Website
The Air France website is not a bad way to find award availability for Air France flights (surprisingly good IT when compared to some other options out there...)
Start by first navigating to the Air France website and logging in. Enter your search criteria as needed, but leave the departure dates empty. What this will trigger is Air France's "secret" calendar view of their award flights.
In this page, we can then scroll over to view August and see all the award options available then. Here, we can see dates with availability for the elusive 50,000 pt redemption.
You can also search date by date on the Air France website, but that might take a lot of time relatively speaking.
Using Roame
While using the Air France website is a good way to find good deals using Flying Blue miles, what if you also wanted to search across other programs? There's a chance that you might see another carrier that might fit the bill better (price, availability, etc.), so why not search across all of them at once rather than just searching one program at a time?
With Roame, you can enter the same exact search criteria as you did on Air France, but see the entire lay of the land rather than just one program's results. Using SkyView, you can even search across 30 days at a time to see everything possible for the month of August.
While it seems like the Air France option still remains as one of the best options, it's clear that being able to see everything at once is still not a bad thing. There are many other use cases where this could be useful to find better deals.
Ok, I Found My Flight: How Do I Book It?
Great! You found an Air France flight you want to book. Before you transfer any points, it's a good idea to contact customer service and hold the award seat. Follow these instructions:
- Gather the details of your flight: flight date, departure/arrival airports, flight number
- Call Air France/Flying Blue (follow this link to their customer support page)
- Navigate to award bookings on the phone (I want to book a flight with miles)
- Ask the agent if they can confirm & hold the award ticket for 72 hours
Once you get an email from Air France and get notification from the agent that the reservation is successfully held, go ahead and transfer your points. Flying Blue points can be easily accumulated from pretty much every major card issuer.
You can also purchase Flying Blue miles directly from their website. With point purchasing promotions, some offers may be better than others.
Air France Stopovers Program
Got a layover on your flight? Air France has one of the most powerful stopover policies around: you can add stopovers for "free" on award tickets. Pricing varies by the actual carriers of the flight, but you can do a lot of incredible things with the stopover program:
- You could fly from San Francisco to Zurich with a stopover in Paris (SFO-CDG-ZRH) and only have to pay for the cost to fly from the origin (SFO) to final destination (ZRH)
- You could fly from Barcelona to Athens with a stopover in Amsterdam (BCN-AMS-ATH) and only have to pay the price to fly from BCN-ATH
- You could fly from Paris to Bali with a stopover in PVG via China Eastern
The only way to book free stopovers is via the phone. To learn more about this process, navigate to this article that details the process in significant detail.
Conclusion
Air France has one of the best deals to travel to/from Europe in travel. Despite the program's dynamic pricing, it's not too difficult to find great Air France redemptions by using their own website or using point search tools like Roame. However, before transferring any points to book, it's always a good habit to confirm the availability with an agent over the phone.
