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If you want to travel to Europe comfortably this summer, Air France-KLM Flying Blue is offering excellent award space in Delta One business class starting at just 55,000 Flying Blue miles.
Plus, if you have Citi ThankYou Rewards points, this deal is even better. Citi is currently offering a 20% transfer bonus to Flying Blue, which means you’ll need to transfer only 46,000 Citi points to book lie-flat business-class seats, a terrific deal for peak summer travel.
This deal was first reported by One Mile at a Time.
Here’s what you need to know about booking this great offer.
How to find Delta One award space
While we love the Seats.aero tool for quickly finding award space across a 12-month period, this resource unfortunately does not show Delta One seats bookable through Flying Blue. The platform does have a Delta One Finder tool that, in theory, shows Delta One seats bookable with partner miles (instead of paying 300,000-plus miles per flight through Delta’s own SkyMiles program).
However, this tool only shows partner seats through one program, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. While Flying Club offers great award rates, showing seats available for 47,500 to 77,500 points, depending on the length of the flight, it tacks on huge fees, taxes and surcharges, which will amount to over $1,000 in additional costs each way. Therefore, you can expect to pay more than $2,000 for Delta One flights in addition to the Virgin Atlantic points required for round-trip flights to Europe.
If you don’t want to pay high surcharges on Delta One flights, try booking through Air France-KLM’s Flying Blue program, as it has both attractive mileage rates and significantly lower taxes and fees. Know, though, that availability is usually hard to find.
You can use Seats.aero’s Delta One Finder as a starting point to check which routes and dates to Europe are available through partner programs. In theory, if a seat is available with Virgin points, it should also be available with Flying Blue miles (with the lower cash copay).
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Unfortunately, we have not seen consistency between the seats available through Virgin Atlantic Flying Club and those available through Flying Blue, meaning that many Delta Air Lines seats available through Virgin Atlantic are not available through Air France or KLM.
If you have a specific route in mind, you may wish to try searching for it directly on the Air France and KLM websites in the hope of scoring a reasonably priced seat. For the best results, look for nonstop flights operated from Delta hubs.
Some Delta One business-class options we found available to book through Flying Blue include:
- Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) to Dublin Airport (DUB) in July for 55,000 Flying Blue miles (or 46,000 Citi points) plus $33 in taxes and fees
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) in July for 73,500 Flying Blue miles (or 62,000 Citi points) plus $33 in taxes and fees
- JFK to Milan Malpensa Airport (MXP) in August for 74,500 Flying Blue miles (or 63,000 Citi points) plus $33 in taxes and fees
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN) in August for 85,500 Flying Blue miles (or 72,000 Citi points) plus $33 in taxes and fees
- New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to Geneva Airport (GVA) in September for 72,000 Flying Blue miles (or 60,000 Citi points) plus $33 in taxes and fees
- BOS to Scotland’s Edinburgh Airport (EDI) in October for 57,000 Flying Blue miles (or 48,000 Citi points) plus $33 in taxes and fees
Related: 9 European summer destinations to beat the heat
How to book Delta One award seats with Flying Blue miles
Once you find availability on the Flying Blue website, click through to the payment screen to ensure the seat is available, and then you should be able to book it.
Flying Blue partners with all major credit card currencies at a 1:1 rate:
You can also transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to Flying Blue at a 3:1 rate and receive an additional 5,000 Flying Blue miles for every 60,000 Bonvoy points you transfer.
Through July 19, Citi ThankYou Rewards members can transfer their points to Flying Blue with a 20% bonus, meaning you’ll need 20% fewer points to book Delta One awards than with other credit card currencies. Transfers must be made in increments of 1,000 points, and there is a maximum of 500,000 ThankYou Rewards points that you can transfer per points transfer.
Transfers from Citi to Flying Blue should be instant, but remember that they cannot be reversed, so we recommend finding the award space on the Flying Blue website first and being ready to transfer your miles and book immediately once you find the flight you’re interested in.
Transfers from other currencies may also be instant, though transfers from American Express and Marriott Bonvoy may take more than 24 hours to complete.
Related: How (and why) you should earn transferable credit card points
Bottom line
While it may be a bit difficult to find availability, it’s well worth spending the time to search the Flying Blue website to see if you can score a great deal on your preferred route, even if you need to be flexible on the dates. Delta One is extremely difficult to book at a decent rate when factoring in the amount of points or miles needed and the additional cash fees.
Even though these seats can be tricky to find, at these prices, they won’t last, so book now if you want to travel in style to Europe this summer.
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