TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.
Some links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission that helps contribute to the running of the site. Traveling For Miles has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Traveling For Miles and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Terms apply to all credit card welcome offers, earning rates and benefits and some credit card benefits will require enrollment. For more details please see the disclosures found at the bottom of every page.
Flying Blue has launched a new mileage sale which sees the Air France/KLM loyalty program offering members a bonus of up to 80% on miles purchased through 11 April 2021. While not the best deal that we’ve ever seen offer, this sale can still represent a good opportunity for anyone who needs to top up an account.
Before I move on to the details of the sale, I need to point out that Flying Blue miles can also be generated by transfers from all three big US credit card programs (Membership Rewards, Ultimate Rewards, and Citi’s ThankYou program) so if you have a stack of points in any of these programs you may not need to buy points in this sale.
Assuming, however, that you don’t have a sizeable balance of transferable points burning a hole in your pocket, this sale may be the key to getting you to the award you’re looking to book if you’re a little short.
The sale
- Buy 4,000 – 10,000 miles and get a 60% bonus
- Buy 12,000 – 28,000 miles and get a 70% bonus
- Buy 30,000 – 100,000 miles and get a 80% bonus
Click To Buy Flying Blue Miles
Headline info
- Sale runs through 23:59 CET+1 on 11 April 2021
- A maximum bonus of 80% is on offer
- Elite members can receive a maximum bonus of 240,000 miles
- Non-elites can receive a maximum bonus of 80,000 miles
Full terms and conditions can be found on the sale page.
The numbers
One of the better things about this Flying Blue mileage sale is that you can buy miles at the same cost/mile regardless of whether you’re buying 30,000 miles (the smallest amount that triggers the 80% bonus) or 100,000 miles (the highest amount non-elites can buy).
In all cases, you will be buying miles at ~1.53 Euro Cents or ~ 1.81 US Cents.
Is this a good deal?
When miles purchased at this rate are used to buy regular awards the deal isn’t particularly good (the surcharges that Flying Blue adds to its awards are simply too high to make the deals truly worthwhile), but when used for Promo Awards or Special Promo Awards there’s usually good value to be had.
Unfortunately, the current crop of Promo Awards are truly woeful and they’ve been woeful or non-existent for over a year (courtesy of the pandemic) so they’re no help at all, and no one should be buying miles in this sale with the expectation that they’ll be able to use them to book a great deal in the coming weeks.
The only time (that I can think of) when buying miles in this sale can make some sense, is when someone already has most of the miles that they need to book an award and just needs to top up an account to get them to their target total.
Buying miles to top up an account could be a good move at 1.81 cents/mile but buying all the miles you need to book an award would be folly.
Warning
Hopefully, this doesn’t need saying but I’m going to say it anyway before someone complains in the comments section: If you have no immediate use for any miles that you buy, you shouldn’t be taking part in this sale. It’s a bad idea to stockpile miles at the best of times, so a full-blown travel crisis isn’t a great time to be stocking up on miles that you don’t plan to use short-term (my golden rule applies).
Remember
Flying Blue sells its miles through Points.com so there’s no scope to earn a travel/airline bonus by using a credit card that offers bonus points for shopping in those categories. This means that this is a good opportunity to use a credit card on which you’re working towards a welcome bonus (like this one), or to use a credit card that earns you more than a point/dollar in a valuable currency (e.g. card_name) or even a good cash back card (one that earns 2% or more).
Bottom line
If you’re planning to buy miles to use for regular Flying Blue awards you’re probably going to struggle to get good value out of this sale and I’d advise you to think again. If, on the other hand, you’re thinking of buying miles to top up an account to book an award that’s available right now, buying miles in this sale could be a good deal.
