So, About That Increased Flying Blue Award Availability…

Flying Blue is the shared frequent flyer program of KLM and Air France and a transfer partner of Chase, Amex, Capital One, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bilt which means their points are easy to acquire. We also see transfer bonuses several times per year and for the past few years it has been a great program for competitive award redemptions, particularly for transatlantic business class travel.

Flying Blue made headlines last week with a no-notice devaluation of 15-25% as covered HERE and HERE and HERE. I agree with Nick at Frequent Miler, if this does result in more availability then it becomes a pretty mild devaluation overall. After all, 60k for business class, or 40k for premium economy with actual availability is better than 50k and 35k that is never available. In Nick’s article he quotes Flying Blue President Ben Lipsey as saying:

By rebalancing the entry-level pricing, we were able to significantly increase entry-level award availability, making it easier for members to book flights at the lowest mileage levels……

This becomes the million-dollar question, or at least the 60k point question: Will there actually be “significantly increased” award availability at the lowest levels, now 60k points for a one-way business class ticket to Europe?

Has Availability Become Better?

I did a deep dive analysis of 3340 city-pair, date combinations for February through December of 2025, searching one way business class availability from the US to either Paris or Amsterdam (the Air France and KLM hubs) from 5 different cities in the US. The short answer: No, not at all. At least not yet.

By the Numbers:

• Days with one-way business class available for 60k points: 3 out of 3340 or 0.09%

• Days with one-way business class available for under 100k points: 13 out of 3340 or 0.39%

• Average points price of the single best day each month across 110 months (10 routes x 11 months) = 164.8k points

• Peak travel months (May-September) were even worse at 177.5k on average for the best day of the month

• Average best price per month to Paris: 172.5k

• Average best price per month to Amsterdam: 157k

Lowest Award Price by Month

Overall, this is very disappointing. I reached out to Flying Blue for comment, but so far have not heard back. If I learn anything new, I will post an update. Hopefully, more award space will be loaded as time goes on, but if not, I have to say the claim of increased award availability was duplicitous at best and an outright lie at worst. Time will tell.

If you want to see the raw data, here is the lowest price each month for one way business class to Paris from Chicago, Atlanta, New York, Miami, and Los Angeles:

Here is the lowest price each month for one way business class to Amsterdam from Washington D.C., Houston, Chicago, San Francisco, and New York:

TL;DR: After a no-notice devaluation last week, Flying Blue has said more award space would be available. If true, that would lessen the sting of the devaluation but based on this deep dive analysis of over 3000 data points, that is far from the truth at this time.