Air France KLM Flying Blue Promo Awards - Save 25% on Business Class award tickets between Calgary and Europe

The newest set of Air France KLM's Promo Awards were released last week and this time we only see one Canadian city included. With promo awards the discount ranges from 25 to 50% off the regular amount of miles required to redeem for these flights. As you can see just by the discount this can be a very good offer if you get 50% off for Business Class! However for us here in Canada the 50% offers are few and far between but we do get 25% off which can definitely be utilized by some! While 25% isn't as good as 50% of course, it still is something to look at if you were planning travel to Europe for May or June. We also show you below how you can utilize the current Flying Blue buy miles promotion to get the miles for this offer and save some cash over the full purchase price of an equivalent ticket.

The offer are for March is:
Calgary to Europe: 25% off Business Class on KLM

Offer Details:
March Promo Awards - Save 20% to 50% on the Award Miles usually required for an award ticket. Destinations vary by each promotional period. Full Details Book by Mar 31 for travel May 1 - Jun 30, 18

Here are all the details on this single offer:

Don't have all the miles? You could always consider transferring Starpoints earned via the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express to Flying Blue. The card has a 20,000 Starpoint bonus right now which translates to 25,000 Flying Blue miles and a nice way to top off your account for one of these awards.

Another option to pad your Flying Blue account to get these award flights would be to take advantage of Marriott's Travel Packages where you can get 7 nights and miles as follows (although these packages are less valuable than Package #1 options):

However as we mentioned in the very first paragraph, there is another way to get the miles for this offer. Right now through to March 19 you can earn up to 75% bonus Flying Blue miles when you purchase miles. You can buy enough miles for the round trip business class flight including all taxes and fees add for around C$3100.00. So ideally you'd only want to buy miles if the value of the ticket is more than $3,100 which many times it can be in the high $4,000 or $5,000 range (or higher as seen below)

Here is an example:
Calgary to Amsterdam departing May 8 and returning May 15:

Booking with promo awards brings the following (93,750 miles + 419.94 EUR):

or booking direct with KLM:

or any other airline:

What would you rather pay? $7,112.96 at a minimum or a little over $3,100 via the buy miles/promo awards avenue? I know lots wouldn't do either but this is an example of how buying miles can be advantageous especially if you do need to fly to Europe and have the budget to do so in business class.