For those who saw this several years ago the wait is over. American Express Canada has added a new airline program to their Membership Rewards frequent traveler participants! This is the part of the program where you can convert Membership Rewards points to airline programs and the two most popular up to today have been Air Canada Aeroplan and British Airways Executive Club. Now you can add in a third program that may prove to be popular and that is Flying Blue – the frequent flyer program for Air France and KLM! We say the wait is over as a few years ago Flying Blue did show up for a couple of days in Amex Canada’s list of airlines probably as a test but then disappeared until now!
Transfer rates for Flying Blue do unfortunately follow the other four airlines in the program outside of Aeroplan and BA and that is you will need to redeem 1,000 points for 750 Flying Blue miles. Still this can be a very lucrative redemption option due in part to Flying Blue’s famous Promo Rewards. Promo Rewards are their discounted flight awards that they offer each and every month. In fact, Canadian cities returned to the list of Promo Rewards this month after a long hiatus due to the pandemic. Right now you can save 25% on the miles required for economy class flights out of Calgary, Montreal and Vancouver (read about that here) But it can get better than that as we have seen Promo Rewards that have offered 50% off business class flights between Canada and Europe and that is where you’ll get amazing value from this new partnership!
And of course don’t forget that amazing American Express Cobalt Card just received status to be able to redeem points directly to Amex’s airline partners which means those 5x points equates to 3.75 Flying Blue miles per dollar.
According to Amex’s site transfers will take approximately 3 days when you convert your Membership Rewards points to Flying Blue Miles. You must transfer a minimum of 1,000 points and anything above that must be in 100 point increments.
Wrapping it up
This is huge news for American Express cardholders in Canada as Air France and KLM provide (well did provide pre-pandemic) amazing service between Canada and Europe and provides another awesome avenue for redeeming Membership Rewards points. As well Canadian Flying Blue members who do fly with Air France and KLM frequently will now be happy to have credit and charge cards where they will be able to earn more Flying Blue miles on their everyday spending.