What Is the Value of Air France-KLM Flying Blue Miles?

Flying Blue is the loyalty rewards program for Air France and KLM. You can earn Flying Blue miles by flying on these airlines or their partners, as well as transferring from programs such as American Express Membership Rewards.

Based on our analysis, the value of Air France-KLM Flying Blue miles is 0.8 cent each. This is a median value from real-world data on 80 economy flights booked via Flying Blue.

What does this value mean?

Our value of 0.8 cent per Flying Blue mile provides a median you can use to determine the relative value of your own redemptions. It is effectively the value you can expect to get from your Flying Blue miles if you used them for a random redemption.

There are ways to get even more value out of your points, such as looking for sweet spots, booking premium cabins and taking advantage of monthly Flying Blue Promo Rewards. However, if you're not careful, you can also get less value out of them.

» Learn more: Should I book award travel this year?

Calculator: Convert Flying Blue miles to a dollar value

With the calculator below, you can figure out how much your Flying Blue miles are worth based on our value. This is useful when deciding whether to use miles or cash to pay for a specific flight.

» Learn more: The beginner's guide to points and miles

How can I get the most value out of my Flying Blue miles?

Based on our analysis, when you book your Flying Blue award flights can significantly affect the amount of value you get out of them. We found that close-in bookings made 15 days before departure provided much more value for your points.

Here's what we found when looking at Flying Blue point valuations across different booking windows.

• 1.2 cents each when booking 15 days before departure, with a range of 0.6 to 3.6 cents per mile.

• 1 cent each when booking 60 days before departure, with a range of 0.5 to 1.6 cents each.

• 0.8 cent each when booking 90 days before departure, with a range of 0.6 to 1.9 cents each.

• 0.8 cents each when booking 180 days before departure, with a range of 0.5 to 1.6 cents each.

How flexible are Flying Blue miles?

Air France and KLM are part of the SkyTeam alliance, and Flying Blue features a whopping 36 additional partner airlines. One of these partners is Delta Air Lines, which can be useful for U.S.-based flyers.

Since Delta's award pricing is highly dynamic, you can sometimes score a better deal when flying Delta using Flying Blue miles rather than Delta SkyMiles.

How did we determine our Flying Blue miles value?

We analyzed the cash and points prices of 80 flights booked via Air France-KLM Flying Blue across a range of domestic and international routes. A regular economy fare class was used for all pricing data to be able to compare the valuations of similar Main Cabin-type fares that are bookable with points or miles on other airlines.

Departure dates were selected at 15, 60, 90 and 180 days from the day of the analysis. Return dates were chosen eight days after the departure date. This process allowed us to analyze a wide combination of days of the week and not bias the data towards expensive (i.e. weekend) or cheaper (i.e. midweek) flights. We used the median value of the dataset as the average.

This method differs from many others in that it looks at real-world redemptions rather than hypothetical, maximized redemptions. The advantage of this approach is that it provides an actual, real-world indication of how much these points are worth on average. That said, it doesn’t take into account the high-value redemptions that points enthusiasts seek.

Wondering what you can do with those miles? Check out our points collector's guide to Air France-KLM, and learn which credit card is best for international award travel.