Tutorial of How to Search for Reward Flights With Flying Blue April 2026 Promo Rewards

I know that booking reward flights can be intimidating so here’s another showcase on how to do this for Air France and KLM (their combined loyalty program is Flying Blue). With a breakdown on how you can benefit from Flying Blue monthly promo rewards (recap of April 2026’s FB Promo Rewards).

North America ↔ Europe / Economy from 18,750 Miles

The prevailing advice for booking reward flights is that you need to book as soon as reward space is released (which can be 11-12 months in advance depending on the airline) or close in (within 1 – 4 weeks of your flight date). And while it is true that those strategies typically give you the most availability and offers some sweet spots (especially if you are booking business class flights), promotions like Flying Blue’s monthly promo rewards showcase that you can still find great redemptions booking 2-6 months out!

One of the biggest highlights for this month’s promos is discounted economy awards between Europe and many North American cities, starting from just 18,750 miles each way! 

Seattle↔ Paris

We are going to look for a family of four (two adults and two children under 12) from Seattle to Paris for the beginning of summer break.

Lesson #1 – Be Flexible

One of the best ways to approach award searches / using miles and points is to be very flexible (or lol something I can’t give you too much advice on with travel, plan very far in advance). What does that mean?

Sometimes you have to be flexible on dates, when I first started looking at flights for this period, I ran searches for Saturday and Sunday but the Promo Rewards Rate wasn’t showing up until Monday.

And sometimes you have to be flexible on where you fly out of or into (also known as repositioning flights). For example, flying to Europe? Often there are many more deals and reward availability (especially true for business class) from the East Coast so you may need to book the flight from Boston or New York. This would involve booking a separate ticket from home airport to BOS or NYC. Very important note that is that best practice is to fly in the evening before or at minimum the first flight of the day IF there are many other flights in case of any weather or mechanical issues arising. Why do I stress this? Because those two flights were not booked together, the airlines are under no obligation to help you if you miss the flight out of BOS or NYC!

In this example, the family is based in Seattle so we only had to make an adjustment with dates to save some miles.

Lesson #2 – Flexible Points are King

It’s natural to think of the legacy US airlines when trying to book flights but one of the first lessons that you need to understand is how broadening the search can reap high rewards.

If we went with many people’s default thinking, we would start our search by looking at Delta which has a direct flight from Seattle to Paris on June 1, 2026 which would cost an astronomical 616,000 miles and $22.40 for four economy tickets.

One of the reasons why flexible points are incredible is that you can fly on Delta but via an alliance partner’s loyalty program for less (this is a quirk that is true for many airlines!)

How much less? This is where things get interesting, as booking the exact same flight for four people via Flying Blue/Air France would only be 113,750 Miles and $134!

But you could fly for even less points if you fly Air France.

How much less? This is where things get even more interesting, as there is a direct flight on Air France and for four people, you could pay only 65,624 miles and $547.60. This is because April Promo Reward flights have 25% savings from the typical 25K saver reward = 18,750 miles AND Flying Blue offers 25% off reward bookings for children (those between 2-11 years of age!) INCLUDING on Promo Reward = 14,062 miles!

And which reward flight should you choose? Let’s look at a couple of ways to help you decide.

How To Earn Flexible Points / Flying Blue Miles

Lesson #3 – How To Access Value / Compare Using Points/Miles VS Paying in Cash

In some ways, I detest what I am about to show you next…because I think that there is an unhealthy obsession with this metric. It is called CPP or cost per point ie a formula that gives you a value for your booking. CPP calculation: (Cash price – taxes and fees) x 100 and divide by award points. The higher the better (ie you’re getting more value for your points)

Let’s take a look at the cash prices for the two reward flights that we are looking at – comparing using more points and paying less cash for the Delta flights vs using less points and paying more cash for the Air France Booking

CPP for the Delta flight booked via Flying Blue, $5774 (cash price) – $134 (taxes and fees) x 100 / 113,750 (award miles) = 4.958

CPP for the Air France flight booked via Flying Blue, $5774 (cash price) – $547.60 (taxes and fees) x 100 / 65,624 (award miles) = 7.964

But remember that there are some serious limitations to CPP such as if you were paying cash, would this be the flight that you would have chosen?

For many, it might be that you would choose one of these other flights that have one connection but would be significantly less. And there are those that would have gone with the cheapest flights even with significantly longer travel times.

Even using these numbers, the CPP for the Delta flight booked via Flying Blue, $3226 (cash price) – $134 (taxes and fees) x 100 / 113,750 (award miles) = 2.718 which is a good number or CPP for the Air France flight booked via Flying Blue, $3226 (cash price) – $547.60 (taxes and fees) x 100 / 65,624 (award miles) = 4.081 which is great

Here’s my thing: I try to get at least 2 CPP for my bookings and look more that the reward flight meets my needs (I have to baby my knee so I fly business and/or have flights less than 5 hours in economy) – because at the end of the day, I say that if you are able to travel for better, cheaper and/or more often, then you are doing this right!

Last note, sometimes the choice between which reward flight to choose is based on how many points you have!

Lesson #4 – Do Not Hesitate

Lastly, if you find a reward flight that meets your needs – book it! There are always going to be more people than reward space available so you need to learn to make decisions quickly.