Air France / KLM Flying Blue Program Liberalizes Expiration Policy for Miles
A change in favor of airline passengers (for a change)
Airline frequent flyer programs have a range of policies addressing the expiration of their members’ frequent flyer miles.
In general, US carriers have the most generous policies as miles on Alaska, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and United
do not
expire.
A second group includes American, Air Canada, Avianca, British Air, and the Air France / KLM Flying Blue program. These airlines have expirations ranging from 12 to 36 months but also offer some mechanisms for extending expirations.
Airlines in a third group including ANA, Emirates, JAL, Lufthansa, Singapore, and Turkish have “use it or lose it” hard expiration policies that do not allow for extensions (except for elite members or those willing to pay high fees).
While the Air France / KLM Flying Blue program falls into the second category, until recently, it had some of the less traveler friendly policies among this group. Its miles expired after 24 months. Program members could extend their expiration dates by paying for flights or making purchases on the Flying Blue co-branded credit card. However, a transfer of flexible points into your Flying Blue account would not extend the expiration date for your miles. Additionally, the miles in your account might have different expiration dates.
As of this month, the Flying Blue program will extend the expiration date on members’ miles after a simple transfer of flexible points (such as Chase Ultimate Reward or American Express Membership Rewards) into an account. Furthermore, the 24-month extension will apply to all miles in the account.
This change could not come at a better time for my household. In May of last year, Ms. Optimizer and I used Air France miles to purchase a trip to Prague. After booking this awards flight, the price for our itinerary in miles decreased by 62,000 points. Based on previous experience, these miles would be worth $1200-1500 so it was worth it to pay the change fee (140 euros or about $162 US) to recover these miles. But, of course, these 62,000 miles could only be used with Air France, and they had a two-year time limit before they expired and became worthless.
With the new policy, I simply transferred 1,000 American Express points to my Flying Blue account. After only a few minutes – voila – the 1,000 miles appeared in my account, and the new expiration date is now two years off.
When keeping points or miles long term (more than a year) be aware of their expiration date, if any. One of the greatest sins of the points and miles game is simply letting a “currency” expire. One thing we provide Travel Rewards Optimizer clients with is a spreadsheet template for managing their cards, points/miles, redemptions, and importantly, expiration dates of points or miles.
So many recent policy changes in the points and miles game have been about either increasing prices or taking things away from travelers. But, this change in the Air France / KLM Flying Blue program is a welcome news and will help many travelers utilize this program more efficiently.
We are ready to help you turn your routine credit card spending into the travel of your dreams.
