For the second month in a row we see Air France KLM Flying Blue’s Promo Rewards feature cities in
Canada! Due to the pandemic and shut down of international travel for
the greater part of that time these discounted award flight offers had
mostly been limited to flights within Europe and to French/Dutch
overseas possessions over the past 8-10 months. But as of last month they made a return to Canada and for this month they are back again however they swap out Calgary for Edmonton and add in Toronto as well.
If
you are unfamiliar with Flying Blue Promo Rewards, they are a limited
time offer that sees flight rewards discounted by 20 to 50% for select
flights on Air France and KLM (sometimes even Kenya Airways) and those
discounts can be for economy class, premium economy class and even
business class. The best deals by far are when they offer 50% off
business class, which we have seen many times from Canada however for
this month we only see 25% off economy class redemption options from Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto & Vancouver.
Even with 25% off this may or may not be
the greatest deal as Flying Blue tends to have high taxes and fees on
top of the miles required for reward flights. When you are looking at
nearly $300 in fees alone between Montreal and Paris or over $500 in
fees for Calgary to Rome you may be better off saving the miles and just
buying those economy class tickets outright with cash. If you do
however find an economy class redemption on a date where the cash prices
are high then by all means redeem away but in our experience of
covering Flying Blue Promo Rewards your best bet is for those 25 to 50%
off business class offers!
Here are the details of this month’s Canadian offers:
Offer details
September Promo Rewards – Save 20%
to 50% on the Award Miles usually required for an award ticket.
Destinations vary by each promotional period. Click here for more details Book by Sep 30, 21 for travel Sep 1 to Feb 28, 22
This month’s Canadian cities:
Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver – 25% off economy class
In the past when we posted about AF KLM’s Promo Rewards we discussed how the best way to earn Flying Blue miles for these flights was by utilizing the Marriott Bonvoy™ American Express® Card as Marriott Bonvoy points can be converted to the Flying Blue program. That option remains however if you have followed Rewards Canada since at least the middle of August you’ll know that Flying Blue has now officially joined the ranks of being an American Express Membership Rewards partner.
Recommended reading: You can now convert American Express Membership Rewards points to Air France KLM Flying Blue
That means cards like the Cobalt Card and the Platinum Card’s points (just to name a few) can be converted directly to Flying Blue at a 1 Membership Reward point to 0.75 Flying Blue Miles ratio. Yes that’s not as attractive ratio as Aeroplan or Britsh Airways which happen to be 1:1 however when you take into account these Promo Rewards that difference can be quickly eroded and in fact be better. Well, better when its 50% off business class like we’ve seen in the past but still let’s look to see how it does for this month’s Economy Class 25% discount. Scratch that as I couldn’t find any days with 25% off out of Edmonton, Montreal
or Toronto so it is entirely possibly they haven’t loaded the promo rewards
just yet for the North America flights as I tried out some routes in Europe and those showed up properly.
Anyways I decided to go ahead with a regular award booking from Edmonton to Amsterdam for week long trip in November:
It requires 50,000 Flying Blue Miles which means you need to convert 66,700 Membership Rewards points to get this flight. On top of this you have C$262 in fees. Compare this to Aeroplan:
Aeroplan requires 77,600 points, which is 77,600 Membership Rewards points and $231 in taxes. So the AF KLM route saves you nearly 11,000 points but you do pay around $31 more in fees. This means the AF KLM redemption comes out better by about $80 if you take a 1 cent per point value for those Membership Rewards points. Plus you have a much more enjoyable routing with KLM on top of that.
You may then ask, what about American Express’ Fixed Points for Travel Chart? Well, you can get the same KLM flights above for only 60,000 points, the lowest points amount of them all but….
you have to pay $732.52 in taxes and fees! No thanks. In this example your best bet is to go with the 1 to 0.75 transfer to Air France KLM if you are looking to redeem points. To buy the same flights with cash you would be looking at an outlay of $1,026 + what one checked (when booked on KLM.ca) so if we take the $262 in fees on the Flying Blue redemption out of that $1,026 fare, you end up with $764 that the 66,700 Membership Rewards points saves you. This puts your Membership Rewards per point value at 1.14 cents, not big by any standard but it is better than the Use Points for Purchases which are 1 cent. But where the value lies is in how you earned those points, were they all 5x points on the Cobalt Card? If so, that gives you a 5.7% return on each dollar spent. And this doesn’t take into account the possibility of getting 25% off the miles required. Just some food for thought when making considerations on when, how and if you should use points for a redemption.
Wrapping it up
Even though 25% off
economy class rewards may not be the greatest deal they may just be the right choice for some of you!
What we here at Rewards Canada are hoping to see soon will be the return of some 50% off business class offers! That’s where the best value will come from the Amex transfer option to Flying Blue. If anything you can use this
post as a reminder to start planning for those future business class
flight reward flights on Air France or KLM. As we said earlier, the best way to earn those Flying Blue miles here in Canada is now with an American Express card that earns Membership Rewards points. Also keep an eye out for the occasional Flying Blue Buy Miles
offer where we have seen them offer up to a 100% bonus. When you
combine the 100% bonus with 50% off business class it can provide you
with some big savings.