Ideas for spending 28K miles sensibly (expiring in Aug)
 

Hello everyone,

I've not flown with KLM in the last 2 years, so my painstakingly accrued 28,000-odd Flying Blue miles (short haul economy!) will expire at the end of August. I have looked at the previous threads on extending miles, but have slightly different questions.

I'd like to keep them or spend them, and see 2 worthwhile options: 1) Take a cheap flight before mid-August to extend the life of the miles by another 2 years; 2) Book a reward flight.

#1 might be possible, perhaps a LON-AMS return later in June or sometime in July/Aug - about £160-200 for an overnight. Alternatively, I could book a single/the return way into the future, and use BA miles to get back, or even book another nested return for sometime in the next 12 months. However, due to various personal/family circumstances, it might be tricky - which is also why I've been unable to try and sort out #2 for anything sensible in the last few months.

I'd feel more comfortable booking a reward flight for further in the future (e.g. autumn) to use the miles - a trip or two somewhere in Europe. However, I've found the KLM reward booking tool very clunky - this isn't a huge miles balance, so there needs to be 'cheap' reward availability. I can't seem to figure out how to search around (rather than for) specific dates, which I am sure I've done before, or any way showing a range of destinations with low-value redemptions available.

I'd really appreciate any input on how to do this, or ideas of places which might be suitable. Are there specific destinations which are often good value from London or Newcastle? I'm pretty flexible about where I go, if I'm just going for a weekend away. Or am I missing a cheap way of extending the validity?

Thank you
squawk

I hope you find something worth spending your miles on but whatever you have left over please don't let them expire. Take a few minutes to do something good even if its only a small amount, thanks.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...25bd2fe196.jpg
https://www.klm.com/travel/nl_en/fly...nate/index.htm



..

Note that you can book a ticket for travel up to 330 days in advance, as long as you spend the miles before they expire.

It seems you're London based. My recommendation is to grab a cheap flight to the US on Norwegian. Then use the Flying Blue points to get back from the US on a Delta flight. You should be able to find availability for 25k miles (PDX-LHR is a good route) and there are no fuel surcharges if you originate in the US and fly Delta metal.

Thank you Andy49 and TProphet.

I'm less familiar with Flying Blue than BA Executive Club, so @TProphet's suggestion of Delta is a great one that I wasn't aware of - I'll certainly investigate it!
@Andy49, I will bear that in mind if I have some which would otherwise expire. Would much rather they went to a good cause!

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Can you check your account again, my expire date was recently changed to Dec 31st, 2019. even though I had no flights for 2 years.

now i got this activity:

To avoid KLM's "clunky" reward/award booking tool you may want to look at Air France's regular booking site and then click "use your miles" at the top of the data input box, login (using your KLM user data) and search for flights. I believe the two sister airlines use the same booking machine, but AF does a better job presenting the information. A benefit of the AF site is that you can easily switch between the purchasing (for cash only) tab and the using miles tab so as to figure out the cash value of any miles that you would use. Good luck!