This is a useful reminder of a feature that many people aren’t aware of…
In this post:
The trick to seeing the Flying Blue award calendar
Air France-KLM Flying Blue is arguably SkyTeam’s most useful frequent flyer program, and award pricing on Air France and KLM can be really attractive, especially if you can find saver level award availability. The catch is that it’s sometimes hard to come across saver level award availability, though fortunately there’s a “secret” way to find it.
When ordinarily doing an award search through the Air France or KLM website, you’ll only see availability for a few days at a time. Fortunately there’s a trick to searching award pricing for a month at a time.
When you go to the Air France USA website, start the process of searching for an award, by going to the “Book with Miles” tab. Select whether you want to travel one-way or roundtrip, the origin and destination, the number of travelers, and the cabin you want to travel in. The key is to leave the travel dates blank.
By leaving the travel dates blank, you’ll be brought to a page that displays an award calendar, showing availability a month at a time. You can then also easily switch between months, so in a matter of a minute you can search availability for the entire year.
Be aware that this only consistently works for routes served by Air France and KLM. So for example, if you’re searching award availability for an itinerary that would require a Delta flight, then this wouldn’t work.
Furthermore, in some cases there are discrepancies, where the calendar shows a lower amount than you’ll actually find when you select availability for that date. However, that’s the exception rather than the norm.
Why the Air France-KLM Flying Blue program is useful
The Air France-KLM Flying Blue loyalty program is useful for booking transatlantic business class award seats. Both Air France and KLM release quite a bit of transatlantic award availability, and the best way to book those seats is through the Flying Blue program. Fortunately Flying Blue is partners with major transferable points currencies, making the points easy to come by.
Also keep in mind that Flying Blue allows stopovers even on one-way awards, making these awards easier to maximize. For the time being, these awards have to be booked by phone, though. Still, this is a great way to get a stopover in Amsterdam or Paris enroute to your final destination.
Bottom line
The Flying Blue program has a hidden award search feature, which can be accessed through Air France’s website. Just go to the award search page, and start your award search, but don’t enter a date. You’ll then see a calendar that displays pricing for a month at a time. With Flying Blue’s dynamic award pricing, this makes it easy to find the best deal.
Anyone else appreciate the Flying Blue award calendar?
Even if it was a "secret" or not easy to find, it certainly is not a secret now....
Nothing new, I thought it is known. Let me know if you donot know how to see virgin atlantic monthly calendar
Can someone give me a phone # for Flying Blue that actually works. The published # seems to go nowhere. I wind up calling the general # and pleading with them to patch me through to Flying Blue.
The US Flying Blue number goes nowhere. Just directs you to the website. Air France/KLM just tell you to call Flying Blue. I called the Dutch flying blue number and actually spoke to someone. Call cost me $20 but in the end I got the award so no regrets.
I always use Skype to call international numbers, especially with airlines and their long waiting times. Most calls are only a dollar or two.
Very useful tip! Thank you!
Seatspy also let's you do this, but you need to pay something like 4 usd a month
The phantom availability on the calendar seems to be the rule rather the exception for me. It seemed every time the calendar showed 50k availability on a day, it would jump to 250k+ when drilling into the actual flight options.
That said, I did finally snag that introductory promo business class fare for 37,500 RDU-CDG after weeks of searching. When they first announced that fare, you couldn't book with miles at all much less...
The phantom availability on the calendar seems to be the rule rather the exception for me. It seemed every time the calendar showed 50k availability on a day, it would jump to 250k+ when drilling into the actual flight options.
That said, I did finally snag that introductory promo business class fare for 37,500 RDU-CDG after weeks of searching. When they first announced that fare, you couldn't book with miles at all much less the promo. I called in multiple times and had 2 or 3 email chains going with various folks at Air France telling them that the issue wasn't that the promo award wasn't available but that there was no ability to book that route with miles at any rate and that had to be an IT error. Sure enough, finally someone confirmed the problem and the next day the award space opened up. At least it worked out but it seems their systems can't keep up with marketing!
Useful feature. Unfortunately KLM has become a completely useless airline. I would go as far as saying their service has dropped to below BA levels.
damn...there goes the secret
Don't worry - AF's technology team is so bad that they'll never fix it if it's a bug, or a feature that they'll want to take away because it's helpful.
I don't it was much of a secret. The daily drop folks published a video on this same topic not long ago
Wow this is super useful but of course the flights I need show up in the calendar but ghost when you try to click them. The calendar shows availability on a couple days in Feb for TKO(silly AF makes you put TKO not NRT or HND)-SFO for 95k via CDG. They show up in the calendar and on seats dot areo but aren't actually bookable. :(
Seems so simple but did not know this, mind blown! Have wasted hours doing day-by-day searches, thanks for the tip.