Transferring Flying Blue to Avios
 

Hi,

I have some miles on my KLM Flying Blue account, and was wondering if it would be possible to transfer these to British Airways Avios? Could anyone please advise on the best way to go about this?

Thanks!

No; that won't be possible.

You cannot transfer Flying Blue miles to the frequent flyer programme of any of the other Skyteam alliance partners, let alone to the frequent flyer programme of a competitor airline (BA) in a competitor alliance (oneworld).

Similarly, BA has absolutely no interest in "rewarding" you for flying on AF/KL or Skyteam by allowing you to "convert" miles acquired by flying on their competitors into Avios for which BA themselves then assume a liability.

Occasionally it is possible to transfer via 3rd party such as a hotel program, at a large loss.

This is also possible from FB to BA Avios via ALL, if I am right with the conversion rates, it works like this - 16.000 FB miles convert to 4000 ALL points. Then you can convert 4000 ALL points to 2000 Avios. Smaller sums are not possible.

FInd a hotel loyalty program in the middle that allow you to transfer in this way FB -> Hotel -> Avios

Check the ones you might already have , maybe they partner with both flying blue and your avios based FFP

Now as you can probably imagine the two folds conversion will be done under two not so great rates , usually between 1:2 and 1:10 , so unless you have very big amount of FB miles and have no skyteam flights or hotel stays scheduled in the foreseeable future , then i dont recommend to do it

The situation with Avios is rather unique amongst Frequent Flyer Programmes. I'm not aware of any other frequent flyer "currency" which is shared by so many airlines using so many different frequent flyer programmes.

Avios were an IAG "invention", formed shortly after BA and IB merged. The decision was made to retain separate frequent flyer programmes - BA still has its Executive Club and IB still has its Iberia Plus, and they are not just identical carbon copies of each other - and the decision was made to "share" a single frequent flyer currency, called Avios. Eventually, all the other IAG airlines (Level/vueling, Aer Lingus) - as well as Qatar Airways and Finnair - have eventually moved to adopting Avios as the "currency" of their frequent flyer programmes. But each of these airlines has kept its own frequent flyer programme, with its own (and different) set of earning and burning rules and partners.

But because of the shared "currency", these programmes include a means of transferring Avios from any of those FFP programmes using Avios to any of the other programmes using Avios (it's not always possible to transfer directly; for example, as you presumably have seen, to move Avios into or out of an Aer Lingus Aerclub account, it has to go via BA; you can't move Avios directly between QR and EI, it has to go through BA).

Air France and KLM went down a different path. Instead of retaining separate programmes and adopting a "shared" currency, they decided to share everything. Both Air France and KLM (as well as TAROM, Aircalin and Transavia) use a "shared" frequent flyer programme, called Flying Blue.

This "avoids" the need, arising from the airlines using Avios, to enable transfers of Avios from one account to another; all the airlines that use Flying Blue miles as their frequent flyer "currency" already use the same programme, so it's a more efficient and straightforward scheme; you don't need to have an account with each airline and there is consequently no need to allow "transfers" of Flying Blue miles between different programmes.

Coming from a BA/EI background, you might assume that moving frequent flyer miles between different programmes is the "norm" - it's not. And, in the case of Avios, it's only possible to move them between programmes that use Avios. You cannot move/convert frequent flyer miles from any other airline - not even the ones BA works closely with (such as AA) - into Avios. You can only move Avios into your BA account if those miles are coming from an account that uses Avios (so: Aer Lingus, Qatar Airways, Iberia, etc etc etc)

This has nothing to do with anything. It's possible to move FB miles to BA (account) Avios via ALL and possibly other partners. Rate sucks but that was not the question.

It is very much on-topic for the OP to whom I addressed the answer.