Some links to products and partners on this website will earn an affiliate commission.
As much as I may generally preach that ‘there’s no such thing as a bad redemption, what matters is what suits you’ – there are surely limits to that advice. More specifically, what do you do when you can find no good use for your Miles and they are about to expire?
At some point a couple of years ago I seem to have accumulated 12,600 KLM/Air France Flying Blue Miles. Flying Blue has a fairly harsh expiration policy, which means that unless you actually credit a flight to the programme at least once every 24 months, your Miles disappear. I therefore now have a few weeks to work out what to do with 12,600 Flying Blue Miles.
I confess that Flying Blue isn’t a programme I know a lot about, but from a quick glance, I can’t see any tempting flight offers that would suit any of my current travel plans. Topping up the account for a decent award flight is an option, as I’ve got plenty of Amex Membership Rewards Points, but I’d only consider that if it provided genuine value.
Inevitably, I started looking at the Flying Blue online shop – and the values (and most of the products) are hilariously bad.
The best options I’ve come up with so far are a bottle of (probably terrible) wine, or £20 worth of Marks and Spencer vouchers.
I’m leaning toward the M&S vouchers at the moment, which would effectively value my Miles at about 0.158 pence each. Bearing in mind that I normally look to get at least 1p each in value from my Points/Miles, that’s a write off of about 85% – surely there’s a better way!
So, kind readers, if you happen to know a way I could get more than 0.158p of ‘genuine’ value from my Flying Blue Miles, please let me know in the comments 🙂
Give them to charity
Certainly worth considering in this scenario, though it’s usually a shockingly inefficient way to support charities in terms of the value per Mile you get. I don’t suppose you happen to know, off the top of your head, what the conversion rate Flying Blue use is? Cheers!
Any cheapo point sales around to get a decent redemption somewhere? Of course tax is expensive with KLM. May have to resign yourself to the inevitable and suck it up.
Either way, you get the True Utility ‘dipstick’ your street cred’s blown 🙂
Haha, I was half tempted to opt for the absolute worst thing I could find on there, to stick on a shelf as a constant reminder to manage my Miles better!
You need to provide a bit more advance warning good sir. There are no shortage of ways that we could have “done a deal” for a domestic JAL or Aerolineas Argentinas or Korean Air reward when I wandering around those parts of the world…
Of course you could just hop over to Amsterdam for the weekend and extend the life of your miles…
Interesting! – how many miles are domestic flight on those? Although the Miles expire soon, I could always book something for next year when I’ll probably be heading to at least one of those places.
Couldn’t be Japan, because domestic flights only go on sale a couple of months in advance.
Otherwise I have no idea what rewards cost with Flying Blue, but just made some assumptions based on their airline partnerships…
Foiled again… it was Japan I was thinking of primarily.
premium economy is 22500 i think between europe and ny. taxes prob stupid. available only to places in next few month. safe travel
Cheers Khaleed! Certainly not a bad price in itself, though as you say, the taxes/fees are probably pretty nasty.
Intra European to a destination not served by BA? Prices are similar to Avios reward saver – miles and cash.
Could work, particularly as KLM fly to my local airport, but unless I was heading to Amsterdam it would mean connecting, which is pretty inconvenient if just popping somewhere nearby for a weekend or whatever. Also, by the time you factor taxes etc, chances are I could fly direct on a LCC for about the same.