Flying Blue (Air France, KLM, and Other Partners) - How to spend miles?

Over the last few years, I have accumulated quite a few miles with Flying Burrito but I do not know how to use them smartly. Miles are quite easy to use with AA, FL and UA but I can't make any sense of using my FB miles.

I have looked at the "deal page" of Air France :confused: and they claim they are offering deals with TATL starting at 25k miles but then we have to fork over $450 of taxes (!!) which makes it substancially more expensive than a heavily discounted Eco ticket (or some other options).

Being a student, I see no value in buying Biz tickets with my awards. That eats too many miles and I do not really need it, although I gladly take an upgrade earned with status.

I plan my trips ahead and do not usually buy expensive last minute tickets where a reward flight could make sense.

So in the end, I am in those murky waters... stuck with plenty of miles that are not so easy to earn (when compared to DL, AA) but which do not seem easy to use in an efficient way (meaning the program is not great alltogether since the April 1st Gourjeat Joke :p) So the question is:

How can I made the most bang for the miles with the FB program as it is setup?

Are there any partners that have absolutely great deals with FB that I should be aware of? Rental cars? Hotels?

I can't see anything really sexy on the Air France page...

Minos
Minos

Oooops, I've literally just started a thread on this same subject. Will keep an eye on this one too.

Hotel and car rentals are an awful way to spend your miles. But how many are we talking about?

Best usage is a promo@ward in business IMHO.

Hi,
About 150,000 to 200,000 miles to spend.

In fact know that BizAwards are a good deal but I do not value these very much because I can fit comfortably in the eco seat, and being based in the US I already got plenty of free upgrades on DL.

I wonder if there are some other good ways to spend miles.

If you book your flights well in advance and prefer to fly Economy, FB is simply not the right program for you because it has a pretty bad earn-burn ratio for this kind of trips. The only option I can see if you would like to spend your miles at not too bad a value is to book a long-haul non-AFKL-but-Skyteam flight for which you do not have to pay these high taxes, say US-Australia, US-South America or US-Asia, for example. A flight to Hawaii might be an option, too, but I so not know enough about the miles and ticket prices for such a trip. In any case, hotels, car rentals and short-hauls will give you less value for your miles. (Note that there are no promotions for non-AFKL flights, so you will not have to look around much or wait for something magic to happen.)
Finally, I would suggest you leave FB, unless you have a reason for staying with them that would justify the bad earn-burn ratio in your case (such as Platinum for life, for example). May I ask why you stayed with FB beyond this infamous 1st of April?
(Btw, this is the very first time I suggest to someone leaving FB, but your case seems to be pretty clear for me.)

I have been FB Platinum this year and FB Gold for the previous two years and frankly there are no special benefits compared to Platinum with One Pass. The greatest benefit is to be able to use the Air France Lounges (Paris 2 E is excellent and there were nice clubs to enter in SIN and HK JFK etc).. and the only advantage for me was being able to fly Biz or now Prem Voyageur ONE WAY at half prize but nowadays you can do that with UA CO as well.
I am leaving FB as my need to fly to Paris would be, Ojala, soon over too!

Finally, I would suggest you leave FB, unless you have a reason for staying with them that would justify the bad earn-burn ratio in your case (such as Platinum for life, for example). May I ask why you stayed with FB beyond this infamous 1st of April?
(Btw, this is the very first time I suggest to someone leaving FB, but your case seems to be pretty clear for me.)


Thnaks!. This is a very valid question that I have asked myself several time actually. So far, I have sticked with AirFrance because of the lower threshold for Elite Qualification by segments with AF when compared to DL (which is not much better).

My travel patterns involve a substancial number of flights with UA/CO and FL as well as DL meaning that it is not always very easy to achieve status with DL. Hence why I am sill at FB even though I believe this program sucks for mileage redemption value.

I will try to look at long haul from ATL on another carrier than AF/KL. This being said, FB has extremely limited availability for those flights not n AF. For instance, there are a lot of major US cities / Wolrld airports that FB claims I cannot fly to using FB miles even though partner DL fly there quite often.

At least that was my feel with the internet award redemption search. Might be different over the phone? So this is a PITA but I'll look further into that.

In fact, it seems that what I thought was true is true: there is no good value whatsoever for me to burn my FB miles...

Minos

I think you're running up against the awful DL award availability. Just because DL flies somewhere doesn't mean there are award seats available.

The other thing is that I am not sure if the FB award booking engine really shows all flight options for non-AFKL flights. Some tool like expertflyer might yield better results.

Another thing is to try Asian airlines, which might have better availability than DL (if you want to go to Asia or Australia).

Hi Minos,

Try our calculator www.milez.biz to see where FB can take you for how many miles. The calculator also includes 7 other SkyTeam programs as well programs from the other alliances.

Rgds
ph

Thanks. I'll try this and report.
I am not sure this tool accounts for the tax and other airline-extorsion fees that the FP charge though... but at least it makes searching easier

appreciated,
Minos