Air France-KLM Flying Blue has a reputation for having a difficult-to-use award booking platform. Fortunately, the European loyalty program has made progress by squashing its pesky award search glitch and adding complimentary stopovers to its one-way award tickets (when you book over the phone).
Now, you can access the Flying Blue award calendars using a simple trick on Air France’s or KLM’s website, as first reported by Geobreezetravel on Instagram.
How to access Flying Blue award calendars
Award calendars are extremely helpful for flexible travelers, especially those programs with dynamic pricing, as they display the various award prices for the entire month. This can help you identify which days have the lowest award rates and when you might choose to travel.
Let’s look at a one-way business-class flight from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS) in the fall on Air France’s or KLM’s website.
After logging in to your Flying Blue account, select “Book with Miles.” Enter your search criteria, but keep the departure date field empty.
By leaving the departure date empty, you’ll see a calendar view on the next page with the lowest award prices for the next 11 months. While prices over the busy summer period are predictably high, you can quickly see them drop from October onward.
If you look closely, you’ll notice that on Oct. 8, 2024, there are one-way business-class flights available for a reasonable 61,000 miles, which is much cheaper than the 349,000 miles charged on other dates that month.
Had you chosen a particular date in October and only seen the lowest price at 349,000 miles, you might have thought this was the best price you could find. By using the flexible calendar search, you can quickly see which months have the lowest prices and how much cheaper they can be.
By booking the Air France flight with a connection in Paris, you could consider taking a few days in Paris to use the free stopover before continuing to Amsterdam. That effectively gets you two flights for the price of one.
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Related: Chaos at Amsterdam mars an otherwise fantastic business-class flight on KLM’s Dreamliner
Bottom line
By leaving the departure date blank on the Air France and KLM websites, you can see an award calendar view for the next 11 months that can be invaluable for your planning, especially if you want to ensure you pay the lowest price and you have some flexibility.
Remember, you can transfer American Express Membership Rewards points, Bilt Rewards points, Capital One miles, Citi ThankYou Rewards points, Chase Ultimate Rewards points and Marriott Bonvoy points to Flying Blue.
This makes Flying Blue miles some of the easiest miles to earn and use.