How We’d Use 100K Flying Blue Miles

Flying Blue is an interesting program. It no longer has award charts (annoying), but it maintains the Miles Price Estimator. This tool allows you to see the fewest number of miles required to book an award ticket on a specific route when flying Air France and/or KLM.

With some competitive award rates and Promo Awards that offer 25-50% discounts, it’s a program you’ll want to know. Even better, you can transfer points from Amex, Chase, Capital One, Citi and Marriott so you’ll always have access to the miles you need.

Let’s take a look at how the 10xTravel team would use 100,000 Flying Blue miles.

Anna Zaks

If I had 100,000 Flying Blue miles, I’d use them to book a couple of trips to Mexico for two people. As you can see from the screenshot below, one-way economy class flights from the U.S. to Mexico are just 14,500 miles. That’s less than U.S.-based programs charge for flights to this region!

And because there’s so much to see and do in Mexico, I can go there again and again, and at these rates, why wouldn’t I? I’d fly to Mexico City on one trip, to Puerto Vallarta on another or maybe I’d fly to Cancun and explore the Yucatan peninsula.

Matt Brown

What’s better than one tropical vacation? That’s right, it’s two tropical vacations, possibly three. And that’s exactly what I’d do with 100,000 Flying Blue Miles. Stick with me here.

Flying Blue is a great option for getting to Hawaii from the contiguous U.S. You’ll fly onboard Delta-operated flights, and it’ll run you 30,000 Flying Blue Miles round-trip per person. With no official award chart, you can easily find Delta charging you upwards of 60,000 Skymiles round trip per person, so mile for mile this can represent significant savings for literally the same product.

But what if you could do better? And the whole two tropical vacations part. Or possibly three, depending on how adventurous you are!

Of course – I bet you’d be stunned to know that Flying Blue only charges 25,000 round-trip per person in economy for award flights from the Caribbean to Hawaii. Yes, you read that right – it’s 30,000 Flying Blue miles to go roundtrip to Hawaii from the contiguous United States, but only 25,000 Flying Blue miles to go roundtrip from the Caribbean.

I know, it makes no sense to me either.

So why start your trip to Maui in Atlanta, when you could first fly on a separate ticket to my favorite Caribbean Island of Turks & Caicos to spend a few days vacation first. You know you can’t start a vacation without a proper pre-vacation!

When you’ve had enough of the Caribbean sun on vacation No. 1, you can begin your journey to Maui for vacation No. 2. You’ll likely connect in Atlanta and fly the same way you would be flying before, so if you’re meeting travel companions that aren’t nearly as adventurous, this is a perfect opportunity to do so. And technically for fewer overall miles to boot! Plus, you’ll be nice and tanned to start your trip to Hawaii vs. having to wait for the trip home for that!

After you’ve had fun on vacation No. 2 in Hawaii, you’ll make your way back to Turks & Caicos to finish your trip. Maybe you’ll even stay a few more days in Turks & Caicos before heading home. After all, back to back to back vacations are exhausting!

Obviously, this is a bit of a stretch – a more realistic approach to this crazy adventure would be to overlap this routing with another trip and set of flights.

Maybe you take the first part of your trip to Turks & Caicos and then continue on to Hawaii in January. You could book a separate round-trip flight leaving Hawaii in January to head back home, and then return to Hawaii for a second Hawaiian vacation later that year, completing the separate round-trip flight. After your second Hawaiian vacation, you take your initial return flight to Turks & Caicos for a few days, before being done with this crazy adventure on your separate itinerary home.

Is it crazy? Absolutely. Is it totally doable for 100,000 Flying Blue miles. Absolutely. Should you do it this way to have a travel adventure for far less mileage than your friends would pay by just booking their roundtrip flights to Hawaii with Delta SkyMiles? Of course you should.

Anya Kartashova

Flying Blue is one of my favorite loyalty programs because its miles are easy to earn, its award redemption rates are adequate, and its partners are SkyTeam airlines, which include Delta Air Lines. For a hub captive like me, it’s a great setup.

Personally, I love redeeming Flying Blue miles toward trips to Europe on either KLM, Air France or Delta. I find the redemption rates and the itineraries to be some of the best from my preferred departure city.

For example, I can fly from Salt Lake City to Vienna, Austria, with one connection on KLM for only 21,500 miles one way. Nope, I’m not joking. See for yourself.

Or I can fly from Salt Lake City to Budapest, Hungary, for 24,000 miles one way. The layover in Amsterdam is on the long end, but I’m the type of person who’d use the long connection to my advantage and explore the city for a day. Believe it or not, I missed the Anne Frank House on my first trip to the Dutch capital.

Long story short, 100,000 Flying Blue miles can get me two award tickets between the United States and Europe in economy class.

As you might have noticed, redemption rates aren’t the same across the board. They’re not even the same between regions. Rates vary between different U.S. cities to different European cities, and dynamic pricing is in effect for the popular dates.

To get an idea of what to expect, I recommend using the Miles Price Estimator to price out a potential flight. The estimate shows the lowest number of miles you could redeem for a specific city pair. It won’t always be what you find, but at least you know what a flight should cost.

Carly Helfand

As someone who just spent the entire summer without going anywhere near a pool or the beach (Oregon’s freezing coast doesn’t count), there is no doubt that my first stop once I feel it’s safe to leisure travel is going to be a resort—and preferably one where I can see the ocean from an infinity pool.

With Flying Blue miles, you can book flights on Air Mauritius, opening up some pretty far-flug—and stunningly beautiful—Indian Ocean destinations: Madagascar, Réunion and Mauritius.

Naturally, though, I prefer my resorts to be free, so of these three options, Mauritius stands above the others. The island has a Hilton, as well as multiple options for Marriott redemptions (including the St. Regis, which is definitely the way to go if you can make it happen).

As others have noted, Flying Blue prices dynamically, but I did some sample searches and found flights from Seattle (which is driving distance for me) to Mauritius via Paris on Air France for 42,000 miles and then back via Paris on Air Mauritius and Air France for 46,0000 miles. Total: 88,000 miles, meaning I’d have enough!

Unfortunately, Flying Blue does tend to tack on a not-insignificant amount in fees, and this itinerary was no exception, coming out to €170.21 each way. If you have Delta SkyMiles, that can actually be a better way to book; routes start at 40,000 SkyMiles one way, and taxes and fees total just $45.60.

Travis Cormier

Let’s face it, COVID has messed up a lot of travel plans for everyone this year. While I’ve had to cancel my fair share of trips, it has left me looking at destinations I’m not normally looking to travel to.

Having cancelled my Maldives trip earlier this year, I’ve been looking at other beach destinations. Quite frankly, it’s hard to not go to some far-flung archipelago in the middle of the ocean. The easy alternative to the Maldives was Tahiti, and if I had 100,000 Flying Blue Miles, I can’t think of anywhere else I’d use them.

There aren’t a lot of ways to get to Tahiti from the continental US. There’s Air Tahiti Nui, United, and French Bee, but otherwise you have to go through Australia or New Zealand. Quite frankly, none of these airlines have good award availability to Tahiti. However, Air France operates a fifth-freedom flight between Los Angeles (LAX) and Tahiti (PPT).

The flight costs only 25,500 miles and about $70 in taxes and fees each way in economy. This means you can fly with your partner round-trip for 102,000 miles and about $280 in taxes and fees to get to French Polynesia.

Now, I know 102,000 miles is technically more than 100,000, but hopefully Spencer will let this one slide through in editing considering you can transfer the 2,000 points from a number of transfer partners. Chase, American Express, Citi, Marriott, and Capital One all transfer to Flying Blue. It’s likely you’ll have some of these points laying around to easily make the 2,000 point transfer to grab your round-trip tickets to Tahiti.

Final Thoughts

Sure, you could use Delta SkyMiles to book SkyTeam airlines but Flying Blue will often provide you a way to use fewer miles for the same flights. That means you can save some of those valuable transferable points for hotels or a future trip.

So, the next time you decide to book a trip to Mexico, Europe, Tahiti, or wherever, take a look at your options with Flying Blue. You just might be surprised to find a great way to book your next trip.

How would you use 100,000 Flying Blue miles?