Related posts:
Getting To Israel Using Starwood Starpoints!
Air France/KLM Flying Blue Slashes Fuel Surcharges On Delta Award Tickets!
I’ve been blogging about about Air France/KLM Flying Blue’s promo awards for many years now. They’re a bit of a mixed bag. You can go to or from select cities in North America (the cities rotate every 2 months) and Europe for half of the regular rate. The good part about the awards is that Flying Blue counts Israel and Russia as part of Europe. The bad part is that they’re only good on Air France and KLM and are therefore subject to heavy fuel surcharges. The other bad part is even when there are promo award rates for both the North America-Europe and the Europe-Israel segments sometimes their buggy website doesn’t recognize the promo rate when searching North America-Israel and their call center is just a royal pain to deal with.
The rate in coach is 12,500 miles each way, in premium economy it’s 15,750 miles each way, and in business class it’s 25,000 miles each way.
That means you can transfer 20,000 Starpoints or 25,000 American Express Membership Rewards points into enough miles for a round-trip promo award ticket in coach or double those amounts for a round trip business class ticket.
The current cities valid for travel in November or December are:
KLM: Chicago, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto.
Air France: Detroit, Orlando, Seattle, and Washington D.C.
Air Europe: Miami.
(Don’t worry…they feature NYC as well multiple times per year, just not this time)
As the picture above illustrates, when searching on Air France’s website for Montreal-Tel Aviv it shows 12.5K availability on every single day! But the catch are the fuel surcharges. While you can use 50,000 or 100,000 Flying Blue miles to fly nonstop Delta in coach or business without paying fuel surcharges, if you use these half-price promo awards you will have to cough up some dough. For example for Montreal-Tel Aviv on 11/14-11/21 the total charges are 25,000 miles plus $522 in coach or 50,000 miles plus $662 in KLM World Business Class.
Is it worth it? That all depends on where you need to fly out of, when you need to fly, what class you want to fly in, how many miles or Starpoints you have at your disposal, and how averse you are to paying fuel surcharges on award tickets. See the related link above about other methods of getting to Israel with Starpoints that don’t involve paying fuel surcharges.
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12 Comments On "Tons Of Flying Blue Promo Award Availability To Israel…But Is It Worth It?"
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Alitalia also has a half price promo now. They can be booked only by calling them. They will hold a booking for 24 hours to get the points in. Taxes around 345.00. As of last week January had tons of availability.
Is there any way to get MR or Chase Ultimate Rewards points over to Flying Blue at a decent rate?
I would say winter economy its not worth it as you can get paid tickets in the same price range of the fuel charges without wasting starpoints. Summer economy is still a decent deal because a typical flight will be about 80k and I personally would value 45k starpoints at like 900 conservatively, so 5-600 is a price I would pay to save 45k starpoints. Or even 55k amex points are worth at least 800 in my opinion so its still a savings dollar for dollar, but its not a slamdunk….if you factor in the hassle factor. I think business class is where its foresure worth it because the savings of aprox. 70k starpoints is worth much more than 675 dollars
@tripper:
Sure, MR transfers at 1:1.
@fred:
Well put.
Thanks Dan, What are the transfer times for MR to Flying Blue?
@tripper:
Instant!
Plus there are no fees for transfers to FB.
hi dan i have lot of air France miles whats the best $$$ that i can get for it
thank you so much
why is there an airfare war for international now?
How do i check availability i have starwood points what site do i find tickets for fly blue or one alliance is us airways having a sale with pionts?
hi dan
i have 100,000 points on american express that i would like to switch to mileage to use for a business class ticket to israel
Whats my best bet out there? Thank you so much for your help
I am eagerly waiting for your reply (since I will need to pay the annual fee not to loose the points) my email address is:luxuryaccom@verizon.net
hey dan sorry to bother. so if i have 150,000 american express points how do i transfer them to go to israel i need to go december 25th returning jan 1st. thansk so much love the website!
I want to go to israel and do not know the first thing about points. i have a chase saphire and a spg card.
Can you call me, or email me? I need alot of help figuring this out without getting ripped off.