We continue to see Air France KLM Flying Blue’s Promo Rewards feature
cities in Canada! This is the third month in a row that there are Canadian cities on tap with discounted award flight offers. For the month of October you can book Flying Blue award flights in economy class for 25% off out of Edmonton, Montreal and Vancouver.
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, & 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
October 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 Oct 31, 21 for travel Oct 1 to Mar 31, 22
This month’s Canadian cities:
Edmonton, Montreal, 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 with these Promo Rewards. Well, definitely 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.
We’ll look at just one example, Montreal to Paris for a week in November:
Here we do have flights pricing with the 25% discount at 16,125 miles each way (normally it starts at 21,500) and $294 in fees. The same tickets to buy with cash are as follows:
Now this cash fare price is the lowest economy fare which doesn’t include your first checked bag – the award flight does and IIRC Air France you are looking at around $90 to check one bag each way. Maybe one of our readers can confirm this for us. Anyways you are looking at getting a value of 1.37 cents per mile not including the checked bag fee. If you include the latter you are getting over 1.9 cents per mile. That’s not bad for an economy class flight. If you were to convert from American Express to Flying Blue you need 43,000 Membership Rewards point for this flight giving you about 1.4 cents per mile in value including the checked bag fees. That’s 17,000 less than the Fixed Points for Travel option and for comparison the best Aeroplan redemption rates for the same dates was 66,600 Aeroplan Points plus $152 in taxes and fees and you still have to pay for a checked bag which is another $140 ($70 each way). I know which redemption I would take if I had to choose one to redeem for with my Membership Rewards points.
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!
We are still hoping to see the
return of some 50% off business class offers in the near future hear! It does actually surprise me that with travel numbers still not anywhere near what they used to be that we aren’t seeing business class options with Promo Rewards. Anyways… 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 (one just ended on September 30). When you
combine the 100% bonus with 50% off business class it can provide you
with some big savings.