Pay Just 79,500 Miles To Fly Roundtrip Business Class Between North America & Europe

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At the beginning of every month Flying Blue (the loyalty program for Air France/KLM) releases discounted mileage awards for Economy, Premium Economy and Business Class travel on Air France and KLM and the latest deals will be going live from tomorrow.

These “Promo Awards” can offer flyers up to 50% off award travel but, while some awards may be discounted by 50%, we’re more used to seeing discounts of between 20% and 25% on the awards most of us would like to book.

Well, we’re about to start a new month so the June 2019 Flying Blue Promo awards have now been published and they cover travel between 1 August and 30 September 2019

Bookings must be made by 30 June 2019 and will go live from 1 June 2019.

Flying Blue June 2019 Promo Awards

As usual I’m going to concentrate on the premium cabin long-haul deals and the good news is that a number of the deals are better than what we’ve seen for a while…and North America is finally getting a bit of Flying Blue love.

Note: Don’t forget that Promo Awards can originate in Europe or in any of the destinations mentioned.

Africa

There’s just one award on offer to/from Africa in the latest set of Flying Blue Promo Awards and it’s for Business Class travel to/from the Ivory Coast.

This is clearly a very niche Promo Award and I’m not really in a great position to comment on how good or bad this deal is but, based on the fact that flying times from Paris are over 6 hours long, this could be a Promo Award with potential.

Asia/Middle East

Just as with the May Flying Blue Promo Awards there are just three premium cabin Promo Awards available for the Asia/Middle East regions this time around – two are for Business Class bookings and one is for Premium Economy.

Dammam (Saudi Arabia) and Amman (Jordan) probably won’t be cities high on many people’s lists of places to visit so Dubai is likely to be the biggest attraction here…but at 66,000 miles for a roundtrip Premium Economy booking I’m not sure this is particularly great value.

August is hardly one of the better months in which to visit a destination as hot as Dubai (September is only a little better) so my suggestion would be to avoid this offer and wait for a good Business Class discount to appear in a future Flying Blue promo.

Caribbean/Indian Ocean

There’s just one Promo Award available to/from these regions and, just like in the May promo awards, it’s a 25% discount on a Business Class redemption to/from Cayenne.

For anyone wondering sill wondering where Cayenne is…here’s a map:

French Guyana is outside the traditional Caribbean hurricane belt so there shouldn’t be too much risk of having your travel disrupted if you’re flying in August/September..and that could make this an attractive option for passengers originating in Europe.

Central/South America

I thought it was bad that Central & South America only had two promo awards between them the last time this list came out so I’m not exactly impressed to see just one award on offer this time around….and it’s not even a Business Class award.

Buenos Aires is a great city to visit and flight times from Europe can easily exceed 14 hours but that doesn’t mean that spending the best part of 120,000 miles on a Premium Economy award is a great deal.

That seems like a lot of miles to spend just to travel in Premium Economy so unless you really have your heart set on a trip to Argentina I’d give this award a wide berth.

North America

Lastly we come to the category I suspect most readers will be interested in and its a category which is offering a number of very good deals….and all are for Business Class travel.

The cheapest deal on offer here is for roundtrip Business Class travel between Montreal and Europe (79,500 miles) and the offers to/from Edmonton and Calgary are pretty good too….but it’s the 87,000 miles offer for roundtrip Business Class travel between Chicago and Europe (or Europe and Chicago) which stands out for me.

This may not be quite as good as the 84,000 miles offer we saw for travel between Dallas and Europe last time out but this is still a fantastic deal and is still one of the better North America Promo awards we’ve seen for a while.

Annoyingly, Air France operates its Airbus A330-200 aircraft between Paris and Chicago and these don’t come fitted with the airline’s latest (and very good) Business Class seats – the Business Class cabin features older seats in a 2-2-2 layout….but the cabin will still be considerably better than any Premium Economy cabin you’ll find.

Bottom Line

Don’t forget that these awards will be bookable from tomorrow, 1 June 2019, and if you see something that interests you, I suggest booking sooner rather than later – availability will almost certainly disappear quickly on the more popular routes and you’re likely to miss out if you procrastinate for too long.

If you’re based in the US and you’re short of miles don’t forget that you can transfer points to Flying Blue from all three major credit card currencies.