It’s rarer to see good value with stopovers on award tickets nowadays. In the past, we’ve seen Singapore Airlines offer stopovers for an additional fee, but today, the primary programs for cheap stopovers are Air Canada’s Aeroplan (5k pts for each stopover) and Alaska’s Mileage Plan (free).
Flying Blue’s stopover policy has catapulted the program even higher than before—the ability to add free stopovers on award tickets, including partner airlines, is extremely powerful. Here’s a summary of what the stopover program entails:
- Stopovers are available for all Air France, KLM, and Flying Blue airline partners (including Delta, Vietnam Airlines, Qantas, etc.)
- Stopovers are only bookable via customer service
- You can add an unlimited number of stopovers to a booking without a maximum connection time
- Stopovers can be booked up to 365 days in advance of the last segment of the flight
- Pricing is based on the overall booking class availability on the itinerary
- A stopover can only be booked for the entry price if the lowest booking class is available on all flights.
Flying Blue’s stopover policy has catapulted the program even higher than before—the ability to add free stopovers on award tickets, including partner airlines, is extremely powerful. Here’s a summary of what the stopover program entails:
Is This Valuable?
Flying Blue has progressively become a stronger loyalty program since it was first released. As Ben Lipsey, the President of Flying Blue & SVP of Customer Loyalty puts it, they want to offer the best deals so people transfer to the Flying Blue program. Thus, as a continuous incentive for people to use the program, the stopover benefit makes it even more attractive than before (not that it wasn’t already a fantastic use of points!).
With the free stopovers, you can do a lot of cool things and search for all of these flight options on Roame:
- 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
Being able to add stopovers to trips can really help maximize the value of your miles and is even better when that city is one you want to visit in the first place. Using stopovers can also help save money, especially if the laying over city is one you were already planning on visiting!
Notably, Flying Blue is a major transfer partner for pretty much all credit cards: Chase, Amex, Capital One, Citi, and Bilt. This means it's incredibly easy to accumulate Flying Blue points and take advantage of this awesome benefit.
How Do I Price These?
Unfortunately, since you cannot book these online, the only way possible to get exact pricing is by contacting Flying Blue customer support. However, Flying Blue has some pricing rules in place to make it easier to figure out
For Segments Fully Operated By Air France Or KLM
For segments fully operated by Air France or KLM, the beginning origin and final destination determine the pricing. Here are Flying Blue’s examples:
- Example 1: For the itinerary LAX-DXB, with a stopover in CDG and fully operated by Air France, the pricing is based on LAX-DXB
- Example 2: For the itinerary AMS-DPS, with a stopover in SIN and fully operated by KLM, the pricing is based on AMS-DPS
In practice, this holds pretty similarly. For example, for my Europe trip, there is a promo fare to fly from SFO to CDG for just 15k miles + $64 USD in taxes/fees. We are also planning on flying to ZRH.
Looking at SFO to ZRH, the cost is also just 15k miles + $82.50 USD in taxes/fees. Since this flight is fully operated by Air France, based on how Flying Blue’s stopover program works, adding a stopover in CDG should keep the price to 15k miles + some mix of the taxes/fees. My final price was 15k miles + $101.56 USD in taxes and fees. This cash cost is roughly the difference between the taxes/fees from the other options.
So, while the miles should hold the same, the taxes & fees do change a little bit. However, this is still a fantastic deal because just the one way flight from CDG to ZRH (with bags) is going to cost way more than just $40…
For Segments Operated By Different Partners
Per the Flying Blue website, partner-operated segments are priced separately per partner. Here are the direct examples from the Flying Blue website:
- Example 1: For the itinerary FCO-MSP, with stopovers in AMS and BOS, and with FCO-AMS-BOS operated by KLM and BOS-MSP operated by Delta Air Lines, the pricing is based on FCO-BOS + BOS-MSP
- Example 2: For the itinerary AMS-AKL, with stopovers in SIN and SYD, and with AMS-SIN operated by KLM and SIN-SYD-AKL operated by Qantas Airways, the pricing is based on AMS-SIN + SIN-AKL
This does make sense, as it is likely extremely difficult/impossible to price partner awards the same way as pricing the program’s own awards.
Connecting Flights In The Opposite Direction
Flying Blue added some catches to make sure this program couldn’t be abused too easily. From the website, if a connecting flight is going back in the opposite direction, the stopover breaks the fare and the two segments are quoted separately. However, a special exception applies for intra-Europe itineraries (which has a lot of potential):
- Example 1: For the open-jaw itinerary LAX-CDG-JFK, with a stopover in CDG and fully operated by Air France, the pricing is based on LAX-CDG + CDG-JFK.
- Example 2: For the open-jaw itinerary BCN-AMS-ATH, with a stopover in AMS and fully operated by KLM, the pricing is based on BCN-ATH.
The intra-Europe exception means, in theory, one could fly from MAD-CDG-FRA-AMS-BCN, all for the price of MAD-BCN (as long as all segments are operated by Air France/KLM). This would get extraordinarily complicated, but opens a rabbit hole of optimal pricing opportunities if executed properly.
Conclusion
The Flying Blue stopover program is one of the best deals in the award flight space and can easily help you save a ton of money while enabling you to explore more on your trips. To book a stopover, you’ll need to contact customer service, as these awards cannot be booked online.
