How-to: Booking Air France Flights with AMEX Membership Rewards Points
In this step-by-step guide, we’ll show you how quick and easy it is to use your American Express Membership Rewards Points, convert them into Air France Flying Blue Miles and then make a booking on Air France.
Transferring your AMEX Membership Rewards Points to Air France KLM Flying Blue
1. Head to the Membership Rewards website –> Use Points –> Airlines
2. Scroll down to Air France KLM Flying Blue –> Transfer Points
3. Make sure to link your Flying Blue account to AMEX if you haven’t already done so. If you don’t have a Flying Blue account, head to the Air France website and create one. You should have it all set up with an account number in less than 5 mins.
4. Points transfer at a 1:1 ratio, enter the number of points you’ll need and hit “Transfer This Amount”
5. Verify all the details and hit “Transfer.”
6. Confirmation screen: as stated above, transfer is “normally immediate, but please allow up to 48 hours.” I’ve found that it’s always “immediate” — transfer hits within 15 – 30 mins.
Booking an Award Ticket with Air France KLM Flying Blue Miles
1. Head to Air France website –> Verify that your transfer has been completed successfully
2. Head back to home page –> “My Account Flying Blue” –> “Book Award ticket”
3. Input your search details
4. A great thing about the Flying Blue search tool: the award calendar. You’ll get a very good idea of what’s available here and might be able to change around your dates to take advantage of low-level awards.
5. Hone in on your date and select your flights
6. Confirm all your details –> “next, fill in passenger details”
7. With passenger details all filled in, make your meal choice. Since I was booking this for my sister, I made the executive decision that she’d be having the “diabetic” meal choice.
8. Head over to payment details –> Submit and then everything should be confirmed!
Calculating your award redemption yield
By taking advantage of Flying Blue’s one-way award pricing, we were able to get some pretty impressive returns on our AMEX points.
Instead of buying a ticket from Nantes-NTE to Stockholm-ARN for this price:
We booked this flight for 12,500 points + $30 in taxes.
And paired it with a €110 (appx $140) train from Nantes to Paris-CDG for a return of:
The next one-way we booked was Stockholm-ARN to Madrid-MAD:
And paid just 12,500 miles + appx $49 in taxes:
Yielding a return of:
