Flying Blue Program Guide 2026

Flying Blue is the joint frequent flyer program of Air France and KLM.

The program is known for its reasonably-priced awards between the United States and Europe, its monthly promo awards, and the ability to transfer points from every major transferable rewards program.

Here’s our guide to what you need to know about Flying Blue.

Flying Blue at a glance

Flying Blue is a frequent flyer program that has evolved to serve two audiences: People based primarily in Europe who fly Air France and KLM and miles and points enthusiasts who want to get value from transferrable points programs like Chase Ultimate Rewards and Amex Membership Rewards

Most readers of this blog won’t earn Flying Blue miles directly, either by flying or by holding one of the Flying Blue credit cards available in the use, but rather by transferring miles from bank transferable point programs.

Flying Blue is a relatively beginner-friendly program. Most awards can be booked online and the search engine on the Air France and KLM websites is relatively user-friendly. And award pricing is usually competitive with what you’ll see on other SkyTeam partner programs.

That said, here are the biggest strengths and weaknesses of the program.

Strengths of Flying Blue

• Extensive transfer partner network. Flying Blue miles are among the easiest to get, thanks to the program’s partnerships with every major transferable points currency. If you have bank points that can be transferred to travel partners, they almost certainly can be transferred to Flying Blue.
• Monthly promo awards. Each month, on the first non-holiday weekday, Flying Blue publishes its monthly promo awards. These promo awards offer discounts on award tickets between Europe and select destinations, and typically include 1-2 cities within North America that offer discounted premium cabin tickets. These promo awards can offer excellent deals across the Atlantic.
• Fixed-price awards. Flying Blue offers fixed-price awards on both its own flights and on partner flights, based on availability, meaning that it is possible to get outsized value from redemptions in this program. In addition to its fixed-price awards, it offers dynamic pricing on its own flights where there is no availability for fixed-price award travel.

Weaknesses of Flying Blue

• Air France and KLM are members of SkyTeam, which is by far the weakest of the three airline alliances. This means fewer airlines to choose from and, ultimately, fewer award seats available at attractive prices. The alliance is particularly weak in South America, and its Asia partners are particularly stingy with award space.
• Flying Blue has moderately-high fees on award tickets. You can expect to pay several hundred dollars in fees each way for business class awards between the United States and Europe.

Getting Flying Blue points

Flying Blue offers a bunch of ways to get points. Since most of our readers are based in the U.S. and are interested in transferring points from bank programs to Flying Blue, we’ll flesh many of these options out in a future iteration of this guide.

Ways to earn points with Flying Blue:

• Flying with Air France, KLM and their partner airlines
• Point transfers from bank programs
• Hotel partners
• Hotel bookings with Hotels for Miles
• Car rental partners
• Shopping portal

Transfers from bank programs

Most readers of this blog will likely be amassing the majority of their Flying Blue points through transfers from bank rewards programs. These bank rewards programs offer point transfers to Flying Blue:

• American Express Membership Rewards
• Chase Ultimate Rewards
• Citi ThankYou Points
• Capital One Miles
• Bilt Rewards
• Wells Fargo Miles

Good uses of Flying Blue points

With your Flying Blue miles, you can book most any flight operated by KLM and Air France, plus flights on SkyTeam partners where the partners open up award availability. But that doesn’t mean every flight that’s bookable is a great deal.

Here’s where you’re likely to get the most value out of your Flying Blue points.

Flying Blue monthly promo awards

Every month, on the first non-holiday weekday of the month, Flying Blue publishes its monthly promo awards, and these published award sales often represent the easiest way to get excellent value from Flying Blue miles.

While past discounts have been advertised up to 50% of the fixed-price cost in miles, these days, you’ll usually find 25% to a number of destinations for award tickets purchased during the next six months. Generally, you’ll see mostly coach awards, but recently Flying Blue has begin publishing long-haul business class award deals again to North America.

The beginning of the month is usually the best time to book these promo awards—often, you’ll find that the business class promo awards get gobbled up within a few days of being announced.

Flying with Children

Flying Blue is somewhat unique in that it offers a 25% discount on award tickets booked for children between 2 and 11 years of age when traveling with an adult. Flying Blue says that the discount applies only to flights operated by Air France and KLM, but I’ve found that the discount also applies to flights operated by Delta.

U.S. domestic travel on Delta

Flying Blue miles can be useful for booking U.S. domestic travel on Delta. And Flying Blue’s award prices often beat Delta’s award prices by a wide margin. Here’s an example showing a flight from Minneapolis to Chicago.

This flight costs 12,400 SkyMiles, plus $6 in Delta Main.

As you can see, booking this same flight through Flying Blue is substantially cheaper. Flying Blue charges 6,000 miles for this same flight—less than half the number of miles that Delta charges. If you’re transferring Amex Membership Rewards, this is already a much better deal.

But the deal with Flying Blue is even better than it seems, since the 12,400 mile price on Delta is actually for Delta Main Basic, which doesn’t include the ability to select seats. If you want to be able to select seats, you’ll pay 15,300 SkyMiles for this flight:

But the flight bookable through Flying Blue for only 6,000 miles includes seat selection, making it by far the better deal:

Point expiration: 24 months from last activity

Historically, Flying Blue has tracked points earned from flying and points earned through (or transferred from) partners separately, with each balance having its own expiration date that could only be extended by specific types of activities.

However, Flying Blue recently announced changes to this to simplify how miles expire and hwo they can be extended.

Starting May 4, 2026, Flying Blue will use a single expiration date for all miles and a simple rule: Miles expire 24 months after qualifying activity, which can include most activities where you either earn (or transfer in) or spend miles.

The bottom line on points expiration is that, as long as you have some activity in your Flying Blue account, your miles will be safe for 24 months from the date of that activitiy.

Bottom Line: An easy-to-use program for SkyTeam awards to Europe

In most cases, we think that you’ll be using Flying Blue for SkyTeam award travel to Europe, and for this the program delivers. Thanks to its fixed-price award structure and its relatively low fees, it can offer decent value on award travel and is relatively easy to use.