Hello all,

First post here. I've recently gotten into the miles and points game and with the recent bump in the welcome bonus to the US Flying Blue Mastercard, I'm thinking to jump on this card. It'll provide an easy way to get status with AF/KL, and maintain it thereafter. It makes sense for me since I'm Dutch, though I live in the US. I'd usually fly KLM at least once a year and the Delta flights within the US should help as well.

However, a big part of my loyalty decisions revolves around the award availability with partners. However, when I look for such availability with Flying Blue (E.g. US east coast to Japan), I can't seem to find any partner award travel whatsoever. I have been using the KL and AF apps, searching for one-way award flights at different dates and keep coming up empty - that is, I only seem to find AF and KLM flights, sometimes with some transatlantic Delta flights sprinkled in. I thought there may be a Flying Blue app, but couldn't find such a thing, instead being redirected to the KL and AF apps to book award travel.

I'm coming here to ask for advice. Am I doing something wrong? There must be the possibility to book award travel that extends to the partners as well? E.g. Korean Air on a flight to Seoul, or Tokyo? Any advice on how to find partner awards through Flying Blue are much appreciated. I did do some looking around and searching in the forums but didn't quite find an answer to my particular question.

EDIT: Okay, I should amend my question a little. After some more searching I realized that I can find award flights, but it seems often they are simply not in business class (and rather expensive, too). However, the partner awards seem to be restricted mostly to direct flights. For example, I see an economy flight from NYC to TYO with JAL, but no Korean Air. I get the feeling that partner flights are only displayed if it doesn't directly compete with KLM or AF... Is that about right?

Best,
Benjamin