Air France KLM Flying Blue Promo Rewards: save 25% on economy class reward flights between Montreal and Europe

 
We continue to see Air France KLM Flying Blue's Promo Rewards feature cities in Canada! This is the third month in a row that there are Canadian cities, well this month a city with discounted reward flight offers. For the month of November you can book Flying Blue reward flights in economy class for 25% off out of Montreal.

If you are unfamiliar with Flying Blue Promo Rewards, they are a limited time offer that sees flight rewards discounted by 20 to 50% for select flights on Air France and KLM (sometimes even Kenya Airways) and those discounts can be for economy class, premium economy class and even business class. The best deals by far are when they offer 50% off business class, which we have seen many times from Canada however for this month we only see 25% off economy class redemption options on KLM from Montreal. Of note we do see the first Promo Rewards business class discount in a long time and that is for flights out of Miami.

Even with 25% off this may or may not be the greatest deal as Flying Blue tends to have high taxes and fees on top of the miles required for reward flights. But read on to see why it may be a good deal. When you are looking at nearly $300 in fees alone between Montreal and Paris or over $500 in fees for Calgary to Rome you may be better off saving the miles and just buying those economy class tickets outright with cash. If you do however find an economy class redemption on a date where the cash prices are high then by all means redeem away but in our experience of covering Flying Blue Promo Rewards your best bet is for those 25 to 50% off business class offers!

Here are the details of this month's Canadian offer:

 

Offer details
November Promo Rewards - Save 20% to 50% on the Award Miles usually required for an award ticket. Destinations vary by each promotional period. Click here for more details  Book by Nov 30, 21 for travel until Apr 30, 22
This month's Canadian cities:
Montreal - 25% off KLM economy class

In the past when we posted about AF KLM's Promo Rewards we discussed how the best way to earn Flying Blue miles for these flights was by utilizing the Marriott Bonvoy™ American Express® Card as Marriott Bonvoy points can be converted to the Flying Blue program. That option remains however if you have followed Rewards Canada since at least the middle of August you'll know that Flying Blue has now officially joined the ranks of being an American Express Membership Rewards partner.

Recommended reading: You can now convert American Express Membership Rewards points to Air France KLM Flying Blue 

That means cards like the Cobalt Card and the Platinum Card's points (just to name a few) can be converted directly to Flying Blue at a 1 Membership Reward point to 0.75 Flying Blue Miles ratio. Yes that's not as attractive ratio as Aeroplan or British Airways which happen to be 1:1 however when you take into account these Promo Rewards that difference can be quickly eroded and in fact be better with these Promo Rewards. 

Normally I'd post a new example here but am taking last month's example as it looks like they forgot to load the offers into their actual system (same thing we saw in September) so we have reached out to AF KLM and will update this post once the new offers are working. 

(This is last month's example - will update as soon as the new Promo Rewards are loaded)
 

You can fly round trip to Paris for 32,250 miles and right around $300 in fees and taxes

 

Here we do have flights pricing with the 25% discount at 16,125 miles each way (normally it starts at 21,500) and $294 in fees. The same tickets to buy with cash are as follows:

 

Now this cash fare price is the lowest economy fare which doesn't include your first checked bag - the award flight does and IIRC Air France you are looking at around $90 to check one bag each way. Maybe one of our readers can confirm this for us. Anyways you are looking at getting a value of 1.37 cents per mile not including the checked bag fee. If you include the latter you are getting over 1.9 cents per mile. That's not bad for an economy class flight. If you were to convert from American Express to Flying Blue you need 43,000 Membership Rewards point for this flight giving you about 1.4 cents per mile in value including the checked bag fees. That's 17,000 less than the Fixed Points for Travel option and for comparison the best Aeroplan redemption rates for the same dates was 66,600 Aeroplan Points plus $152 in taxes and fees and you still have to pay for a checked bag which is another $140 ($70 each way). I know which redemption I would take if I had to choose one to redeem for with my Membership Rewards points.

Wrapping it up 

Even though 25% off economy class rewards may not be the greatest deal they may just be the right choice for some of you! We are still hoping to see the return of some 50% off business class offers in the near future, the first step was actually seeing a business class offer on the list time! It still surprises me that with travel numbers still not anywhere near what they used to be that we aren't seeing business class options with Promo Rewards. Anyways... if anything you can use this post as a reminder to start planning for those future business class flight reward flights on Air France or KLM. As we said earlier, the best way to earn those Flying Blue miles here in Canada is now with an American Express card that earns Membership Rewards points. Also note that right now you can buy Flying Blue Miles  with up to a 100% bonus (until November 5). When you combine the 100% bonus with 50% off business class it can provide you with some big savings.