25% Bonus For Transferring Membership Rewards Points To Flying Blue; Fly Round-Trip To Israel For 20,000 Points Plus Fuel Surcharges Or 40,000 Points With No Fuel Surcharges!

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25% Bonus For Transferring Membership Rewards Points To Flying Blue

Through 02/29 you will get 1,250 Flying Blue miles for every 1,000 American Express Membership Rewards Points. You are able to borrow up to 60,000 points by calling Membership Rewards if you have a Platinum card and up to 15,000 points on other cards. Points borrowing allowances if you have a Starwood card is based on your average spending. Points must be paid back (through opening new cards or spending) within 12 months.

Flying Blue is the mileage program of Air France and KLM.  They are both Skyteam alliance members, as is Delta.

Flying Blue is known for low mileage rates but high fuel surcharges.

With their promo awards you can fly from rotating cities in the US and Canada (currently NYC and LAX are on the list for example) to Europe (which includes Israel in the Flying Blue program) for just 25,000 miles round-trip. However fuel surcharges on promo awards to Israel can run $500-$700 round-trip. Promo awards are only for travel on Air France or KLM, not on any partners.
So basically you can get to Israel for 20,000 Membership Rewards or Starpoints plus the fuel surcharges.
For coach the value is somewhat suspect, but you can also use promo awards in business class for 50,000 miles round-trip plus fuel surcharges.
A business class ticket for 40,000 Membership Rewards or Starpoints plus fuel surcharges is not bad at all.

Another nice thing about Flying Blue is that they allow one-way redemptions, something that Delta does not allow you to do with their miles.

Don’t want to pay any fuel surcharges?
Flying Blue will book you on Delta to Israel with no fuel surcharges and at the Europe rates. That means 50,000 miles round-trip in coach or 100,000 miles round-trip in business.
With the transfer bonus that means you can get to Israel for just 40,000 Membership Rewards or Starpoints in coach or 80,000 in business, and there are no fuel surcharges!

The major caveat is that Flying Blue can only book you on Delta’s “Low” availability and you won’t even see Delta as an option when you search for flights on Air France’s website unless there is Delta Low availability.  There is no way to only search for Delta flights on Airfrance.com.
Beware that Delta’s “Low” availability, especially in business, can be very hard to find at times as they are quite stingy with releasing it. Always search for award availability before transferring points!

The best way to search for that is to search for your award ticket on Delta.com, then click on “View Award Calendar” on the left-hand side of the page.  Once on the calendar be sure to click on coach or business and then locate dates in green.  Click on the green dates to make sure that flights are available on Delta and not on a partner airline on which Flying Blue will charge a fuel surcharge.  Once you have dates that work go to the Air France Flying Blue site and type in those same dates and you should see the Delta flights.

Delta charges 80,000 miles to Israel in coach and 120,000 miles in business (if you find low tier availability) if you book on Flying Blue it’s only 50,000 in coach and 100,000 in business on Delta.
By transferring to Flying Blue for Delta flights to Israel you will save 40,000 points on each coach (40K vs. 80K) or business (80K vs. 120K) ticket as opposed to booking directly from Delta.

Delta flies nonstop between JFK and Tel Aviv.

Points needed to transfer to Flying Blue to fly on Delta to Israel:
-20K Membership Rewards or Starpoints gets you 25,000 Flying Blue miles, enough for a one-way coach ticket.
-40K Membership Rewards or Starpoints gets you 50,000 Flying Blue miles, enough for a one-way business ticket or round-trip coach ticket.
-80K Membership Rewards or Starpoints gets you 100,000 Flying Blue miles, enough for a round-trip business ticket.

Sample dates:
-JFK-TLV, departing on 02/13, returning on 02/20 in coach.  When selecting the nonstop Delta flights the cost in coach is just 50,000 miles+$78.50.
-JFK-TLV, going one-way on 02/22 in business class.  When selecting the nonstop Delta flights the cost in business is just 50,000 miles+$19.20.

Credit cards that will get you SPG or MR points to transfer to Flying Blue:

Starwood American Express Consumer Card, 10K bonus for spending $1, plus 15K bonus for spending $5K in 6 months.

Starwood American Express Business Card. 10K bonus for spending $1, plus 15K bonus for spending $5K in 6 months.

American Express Consumer Platinum Card, 25K bonus for spending $1K in 3 months.

American Express Consumer Premier Rewards Gold Card 15K bonus for spending $1K in 3 months.

American Express Consumer Gold Rewards Card 10K bonus for spending $1K in 3 months.

Having problems seeing card offers? Getting a “card not available” or other error message? Read this!
1. Try using another browser (IE, Firefox, or Chrome) to see the offer.
2. You can try deleting your browser’s cache and cookies to see the offers. To do so just hold down the Ctrl, Shift, and Delete buttons on your keyboard and then delete your cache and cookies.
3. You can also try browsing “incognito” or “in-private” to see the offers. In IE and Firefox you can access this mode by holding down Ctrl, Shift, and P buttons on your keyboard. In Chrome you can access this mode by holding down Ctrl, Shift, and N. Then just return to DansDeals.com and click on the card offer you want.

-Just fill out the standard application. Don’t click for the shorter existing cardmember application or you will not get the best offer.

HT: Yosef, via DDF