Air France has a dynamic currency that sometimes produces a cheap price and sometimes an absurd price. It’s nice the program offers a discount for child awards and potentially free stopovers.

For this post, I’m not going to get into the details of the elite status aspect of the program and instead focus on the redemption side of the program.

It’s Easy to Transfer Points to Air France Miles

Air France Flying Blue makes it easy to rack up a lot of miles by transferring them in from other major bank programs. You’ll find all the usual suspects here (American Express, Bilt, Chase, Citi, and Capital One). Each of these programs normally transfers points to Air France at a 1:1 ratio. There are occasional bonus transfer amounts that could provide a temporary boost to the transfer ratio, but unless your travel aligns with those transfer bonuses, you shouldn’t be moving points over speculatively.

What you’ll end up finding is that if you need to boost your balance for a flight, you have plenty of options to quickly do so.

The Program Sells Miles Cheaply

One of the easiest ways to build points quickly is just to buy them. Sure, you could transfer points in from other programs. Or maybe you have interest in signing up for credit cards. But the quickest way to build your stash is to simply buy them. Some programs have a terrible price to pay for miles (and remember there is a base price for all miles). Air France does a decent job selling miles relatively cheaply during their sales. However, the base price for miles is quite high (3.05 US cents/mile)

Air France will on occasion sell miles with a bonus multiplier of up to 100% or at a discount of as low as 45% off.

A brief history of past points sales:

• 29 Nov 2024 – 19 Dec 2024: As much as 45% off (1.68 cents/mile)
• 14 Oct 2024 – 27 Oct 2024: As much as 45% off (1.68 cents/mile)
• 15 Jul 2024 – 4 Aug 2024: As much as 40% off (1.83 cents/mile)
• 21 May 2024 – 16 Jun 2024: As much as 70% bonus (1.79 cents/mile)
• 4 Apr 2024 – 25 Apr 2024: As much as 35% bonus (2.35 cents/mile)
• 6 Feb 2024 – 29 Feb 2024: As much as 50% off (1.53 cents/mile)
• 1 Dec 2023 – 21 Dec 2023: As much as 100% bonus (1.53 cents/mile)
• 23 Oct 2023 – 7 Nov 2023: As much as 100% bonus (1.53 cents/mile)
• The highest bonus ever was 120% in 2022 (1.39 cents/mile)

Best Award Availability for Air France/KLM

Want to fly Air France or KLM? As is the current pattern, you’re going to find the best availability on their own flights. But, that being said, you’re going to do best if you remain flexible.

The best award pricing seems to be connections

Let’s assume you wanted to fly between Paris CDG and Los Angeles LAX in business class. On November 23, 2025, the nearly 12 hour flight between the cities will cost you 178,000 Air France miles. That certainly wouldn’t be classified as a deal.

However, let’s assume you’re looking for a trip from Munich MUC to LAX, with a connection in CDG. Well, the price of that flight will drop by over 100,000 miles to just 77,000 miles. That’s certainly a friendlier price to pay.

For avoidance of doubt, this is the same flight. But adding in that connection is what drops the price quite a bit.

You might find prices change based on the European origin/destination. I’ve felt that on average, destinations in Germany are a little cheaper than others (attacking that Lufthansa stronghold). But if you’re flexible with where you’re going in Europe, you might be tempted to (annoyingly) search around for the best pricing.

Award prices will change over time

One of the other things that makes the program a little frustrating at times is that award prices change over time. You might feel like you want to book your award as early as possible. Well, they might not have the cheapest pricing right as the schedule opens. The rules on when prices are cheapest also don’t necessarily follow the rule of thumb when paying with cash (three months before departure).

You’re going to have to repeatedly check pricing when you have dates in mind until you get something that works for you. Given the fee for canceling awards, you’re best off booking backup flights with another program (like American Airlines) and then fishing for the price you want with Air France.

Check the Air France pricing tool for minimum prices

Want to know what the minimum theoretical price you could pay to get between two cities? Air France maintains a tool to help you get an idea of what that might be. On their Flying Blue website, scroll down to the “Explore the World with Miles” section and enter your airports. Of course, this is just the theoretical low price and might not reflect what is currently bookable.

Here is a rough idea of minimum points prices:

If you’re looking for the cheapest flights on Air France or KLM in any cabin, the routes to North America are the cheapest.

Book difficult Japan Airlines (JAL) flights

One thing that people don’t realize is that Air France / KLM (of the SkyTeam alliance) is partners with Japan Airlines (oneworld alliance). That means you can use your Air France miles to book Japan Airlines flights.

Where this especially comes into play is if you really want to fly Japan Airlines. With Air France, you can book flights 360 days in advance. British Airways, which typically you’d think of as being fairly early, is able to book awards 355 days in advance. Meanwhile, American Airlines can book 331 days out. Would you want to book with Air France? Well, if you wanted a high-demand route and absolutely wanted to book it before anyone else, you can do it with Air France.

No, this isn’t going to be the cheapest rate available (hello, American), but you’ll reliably find award space. Plus it’s certainly helpful to be able to transfer in points from any bank program to top your account off.

Now, if you’re willing to gamble, what you can do is book your awards first with Air France. Then, at some later date (say, 200-300 days out), cancel your Air France award. The JAL award space might become bookable for partner awards once again. If it is bookable, scoop it up with your AA miles at a much more reasonable price (60,000 AA miles).

Just note that there is a non-zero risk that the award flights don’t reappear (in fact, the last time I canceled awards on JAL in 2023, they didn’t come back). But it could be worth the gamble.

Cheap Stopovers

One thing I absolutely love is when I can piece together multiple destinations on an award trip for an efficient price. Sure, the old round-the-world style bookings were nice back in the day, but most programs got rid of those. Instead, I’ve been looking more for programs that offer a stopover along the way. Recall that a stopover is defined as a stay that’s longer than 24 hours on an international journey.

Air France offers a long, detailed explanation of the rules on their website:

• If you want to book a stopover, you’ll need to call in.
• You can add any number of stopovers along the journey.
• There is no upper limit to how long stopovers can last.
• While the website states that any partner airline is bookable with a stopover, when flights involve airlines other than Air France or KLM, the pricing is additive (and thus there isn’t much benefit).
• If the flight backtracks, expect the pricing to be additive (unless you’re booking intra-Europe flights).
• A stopover is only “free” when the lowest booking class (fare) is available on all flights.

The last rule is the most restrictive. It wouldn’t be so bad if you’re able to book the award online so you can better understand the restrictions price has on the algorithm. But you’re going to need to find the lowest possible price between the airports in question. That could entail using the points calculator referenced above, but there is some ambiguity. To make this work, you might need to spend some time on the phone with a ticketing agent.

Child awards are 25% off

One of the things I love about Air France is the ability to book awards for children aged 2-11 with a 25% miles discount. I’ve taken advantage of this discount myself during our trip from Paris back to Los Angeles.

It’s expensive to build up enough points to travel comfortably with two children. Anything that helps make pricing a bit more affordable when bringing the family is greatly welcomed. The discount is automatically applied when you start your award search.

How to Best Search for Availability?

I like using Seat Spy to help search pricing, but the real downside of that site is that everything is based on flights to/from Paris CDG. That matters when pricing varies based on each city pair as described above. So while Seat Spy can give an idea of potential routes, you might find much cheaper pricing than what’s listed.

Thus, I’d say it’s probably more efficient of you to just search the Air France website. You will need to sign up for an account, but you can see multiple days at once. A bit of warning though: sometimes the pricing listed in the weekly calendar doesn’t line up with the actual cheapest pricing on that date.

Another consideration is using the free point.me tools to help search for awards.

Do Miles Expire?

Yes, miles expire after 2 years if there is no activity in your account. However, there’s a bit of a nuance with keeping your miles active. If you’ve never credited a flight to your account, you can extend your miles by purchasing miles or transferring some in from a bank program. If you have credited a flight, you’re going to have to credit another flight.

Accounts belonging to children under age 18 do not have to worry about expiring miles.

Anything Else?

The Air France Flying Blue program just experienced a devaluation in January 2025. This brought up the lowest possible price for awards roughly 25%. While any devaluation isn’t fun to experience, it’s a reasonable change compared to what some other programs have gone through. If you can find pricing at the cheaper end of the spectrum, it’s still competitive.