We all know that airlines often have fare sales—they drop the prices on certain flights during certain time periods and you get to fly and pay less money than might be typical for your ticket.

But do airlines have award-redemption sales? Do they drop the cost in miles for certain flights during certain time periods and you get to fly and pay fewer miles than normal? Yes!

Not every airline program discounts award flights; some just stick with their award chart pricing or dynamic pricing, and award flights always stay within the typical award-pricing range. But some airline programs do offer sales on how many miles an award flight will cost with them, and one of the programs that offers these sales on a predictable basis is Flying Blue, the program that Air France and KLM use.

Flying Blue Promo Rewards: the basics

Every month, usually on the first, Flying Blue announces promo rewards tickets that you can book for a discounted amount of miles. Which routes and which cabin classes these are offered on vary from month to month, so you should always check to see if any are offered from your city or a city that might make sense for you to position to. The 25% discount on child award flights also applies to promo rewards flights, so your kids can cost even fewer miles!

Here’s an example of some promo rewards for this month (November 2023).

You can tell that the first option is between Abu Dhabi and Paris because there’s an Air France logo in the bottom-right corner of the photo. Similarly, you can tell that the Los Angeles option is between there and Amsterdam because of the KLM logo—KLM is the flag carrier of the Netherlands.

Economy seats on these specific routes are on sale during the month of November for travel until April 30, 2024. This is a typical timeframe; you usually have several months after the promo reward route is announced to actually fly it. You just need to book it at the promo rate during the month it’s announced, because after that, it’s gone. And as the award seats book up during the month, they’re gone, so it pays to look at the beginning of the month.

Flying Blue also releases promo rewards for premium economy and business class, and these are a few of this month’s options:

37,500 Flying Blue miles from Raleigh/Durham or Edmonton to Europe in business class is a great deal!

But you know what would make it an even better deal?

If a bank were having a transfer bonus to Flying Blue when you needed to transfer miles to book a promo reward flight.

How you can save even more miles: transfer bonuses

That’s right—if you find a promo reward flight that will work for you and there also happens to be a bank transfer bonus to Flying Blue, you will pay even fewer miles for that award flight than the promo price!

For example right now through November 30, Chase is having a 25% transfer bonus for points transferred to Flying Blue. So let’s say you wanted to fly from Dallas to Paris in premium economy. The promo reward price is 26,250 miles, which is great. But if you transfer your points from Chase to Flying Blue, you don’t have to transfer 26,250 points—you only have to transfer 21,000 points! 21,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points x 1.25 = 26,250 Flying Blue miles

Flying one-way from Dallas to Paris in premium economy for 21,000 Ultimate Rewards points is an ASTOUNDING deal.

The main takeaways from this post should be:

1. Check at the beginning of every month to see if there are any Flying Blue promo rewards that could be useful to you.
2. Always have some points available that you could transfer to Flying Blue if you find a great deal. The good news here is that Flying Blue is a transfer partner of all four major bank points programs, so that part is easy!
3. Before you transfer any points to Flying Blue to take advantage of a promo reward flight, check to see if there are any transfer bonuses that could make your points worth even more.

Questions about Flying Blue promo rewards? Ask in the comments!