How (and Why) To Buy Flying Blue Miles

Flying Blue is the loyalty program of Air France, KLM, Tarom, Aircalin and Transavia. As KLM and Air France are members of the SkyTeam alliance, Flying Blue Miles can be used to book flights on other SkyTeam airlines. They also partner with other airlines, most notably Qantas for Australian travellers.

With the announcement in mid-2025 of the expansion of Air France/KLM’s partnership with Qantas, you could (theoretically) redeem your Flying Blue Miles to travel in Qantas First Class.

Transfers to Flying Blue

The option to transfer from CommBank Awards to Flying Blue was removed in August 2025. The only other transfer options available to Australians are from hotel loyalty programs. This includes Marriott Bonvoy and Hilton Honors (creating a roundabout way to convert from Amex Membership Rewards).

Other options include Accor Live Limitless (ALL), Best Western Rewards, Choice Privileges, IHG Hotels & Resorts (One Rewards), Radisson Rewards, World of Hyatt, and Shangri-La Circle.

If you don’t have any rewards points with these hotel partners, of course you could credit your next SkyTeam, Qantas (though not certain fare classes such as discount economy), or other partner airline flights to Flying Blue.

But barring that, the next best option is to purchase your Flying Blue Miles directly from their website. The key is to buy miles during a promotion, and redeem them for good value reward flights. Doing so, you could save a significant amount of money off the normal cash ticket price!

Buying Flying Blue Miles

You can buy Flying Blue Miles directly from their website from about USD3.17c (~AU4.76c) per mile. This isn’t great value, especially when you consider that you can get them much cheaper than this.

You could buy the miles in bulk when they have promotions or bonuses. Or you could explore purchasing the subscription package. Both of these options will result in more miles for your buck than just purchasing them with no planning!

Special promotions on buying Flying Blue Miles

Flying Blue regularly offer promotions on buying miles directly. This can be via a discount, or bonus miles, on your purchase. In this latest offer, the highest offer was for 80% bonus miles on purchases between 50,000 – 100,000 miles.

If you maximised the number of miles you bought, this would effectively give you 180,000 miles (100,000 + 80,000 bonus) for USD$3,050 (~AU$4,575) – or USD1.69c (~AU2.54c) per mile. Note that the cost per mile is lower the more miles you buy.

Always make sure you do your own calculations, but most of the time it won’t be worth buying miles from Flying Blue with no promotion or bonus. The good news is that these tend to come around fairly often. So you can be confident that if you’ve just missed one, the next is likely only a couple months away. If you can wait that is!

Flying Blue Miles Subscriptions

If you don’t need the miles immediately, another option is to sign up to the Subscribe to Miles program from Flying Blue. This program is very similar to the Avios subscriptions offered by British Airways.

For a monthly fee, you receive a set number of miles for that month. The options are as follows:

• Starter: 2,000 miles per month for USD$34.20 (~AU$51.30)
• Smart: 5,000 miles per month for USD$79 (~AU$118.5)
• Advanced: 10,000 miles per month for USD$146 (~AU$219)
• Complete: 17,000 miles per month for USD$227.8 (~AU$341.7)

The best value per mile is with the Complete package where each mile will cost you approximately USD1.34c (~AU2.01c). In fact, all the packages except the Starter will give you better value per mile compared to buying in bulk with a discount. Another thing to note is that you can also pay in Euro instead of USD. So depending on exchange rates, this may take the cost down even further.

Redeeming Flying Blue miles for reward flights

Unfortunately, Flying Blue has completely dynamic pricing, including on partners. But there are still good deals around! Also, for most partner flights Flying Blue charges per segment – or at the very least, adds on extra miles for connecting flights.

There are a couple of interesting redemptions for Australians using Flying Blue miles. A few of these include on:

Qantas

Flying Blue prices Qantas Economy reward flights as low as 5,000 Flying Blue miles, plus ~USD50 in taxes and fees. You’ll see these prices on short flights, such as Sydney to Melbourne.

If you have Points Club, you should also earn status credits on these flights!

Garuda Indonesia

A return trip from Melbourne to Denpasar Bali in Garuda’s lie-flat Business class generally costs over $3,000. But if you can book the same flights through Flying Blue, it could only cost 55,000 miles plus about $200 in taxes.

This means that if you use your Complete package subscription miles, the total cost would only be about $1,300! Alternatively, if you bought your miles in bulk and maximised the 80% bonus promotion, this same trip could cost roughly $1,600.

A bit more expensive than the subscription, but half price or more when compared with purchasing the flights with cash!

Vietnam Airlines

Vietnam Airlines offers the only lie-flat Business Class between Australia and Vietnam, with flights from Perth, Sydney and Melbourne.

Flying Blue has some extremely attractive pricing on awards, with Perth to Ho Chi Minh City costing just 36,000 miles for a one-way Business Class ticket.

Korean Air

Similarly to Qantas, for short cheap Economy hops from Seoul to China or Japan, the lowest cost Flying Blue charges is 5,000 miles plus taxes. In Business the cost can be around 15,000 Flying Blue Miles plus taxes. This means that it could cost you from $125 for Economy – or $326 in Business – one way from Seoul to Fukuoka, Shanghai, or Beijing!

Malaysia Airlines

Thanks to a separate partnership, Flying Blue miles can be used on some Malaysia Airlines routes, including to and from Australia. There is less availability than with Oneworld programs such as Qantas, but it can be a solid use of miles if you don’t have any other use for them.

Air France/KLM

Of course, you also use Flying Blue miles for flights on Air France and KLM. This includes on flights from Asia to Europe, but also KLM’s fifth-freedom routes like their Bali-Singapore flight, operated by a Boeing 777.

Flying Blue miles are also the only way to redeem miles for Air France La Premiere First Class, although you can still only do this with Flying Blue Platinum or Ultimate status.

Promo Rewards

Flying Blue also offers promo reward tickets. These are released on the first day of each month, and are up to 25% off the regular price. These include long-haul flights to and from Europe on Air France and KLM operated flights. So make sure to have a look for your desired route around this time!

How to book reward flights with Flying Blue

So now that you have your miles, you’re ready to book some flights! The good news is that most rewards flights can be booked online through the KLM or Air France websites and apps.

They are also relatively easy to look for flights before you even have the miles. This lets you buy your miles with reasonable confidence that the flights you want are available.

Unfortunately, Flying Blue does utilise a dynamic reward price chart. This means that sometimes flights can be much more expensive than others, depending on demand.

To start your search, simply create a Flying Blue account (if you don’t have one already) and then log into the KLM or Air France website. Now just toggle the selector to ‘Book with Miles’, input your desired flight details, and away you go.

A cheeky little hack is that if you’re searching for one way flights on the Air France website, you can leave the Departure date dropdown blank. This will bring up a calendar view when you click the Search flights button, which makes it way easier to see when and for how much flights are available.

Of course, to make it easier you can use one of the handy award search tools that are available like seats.aero. This allows you to see multiple airports, routes, dates, and cabin class availabilities in one go!