A faster way to spot Flying Blue award deals

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Flying Blue, the loyalty program for Air France and KLM, is one of the most popular award-travel options for flights to Europe (and elsewhere) for a variety of reasons.

For one, Flying Blue points are easy to earn since the program is a transfer partner of Amex Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Capital One Miles, Chase Ultimate Rewards, and the Citi ThankYou program.

Flyers can also access a range of award "sweet spots" within the program, including one-way business-class flights between the U.S. and Europe for 60,000 miles and economy fares for 25,000 miles or less.

The program also offers Flying Blue Promo Rewards, which are essentially "sale awards" for specific itineraries that cost considerably fewer miles. This program is also one of the few that makes it easy to find enough awards for a family of four (or potentially five or six) on the same flight.

Unfortunately, finding the best deals with Flying Blue isn't easy since the airline uses dynamic pricing for all awards and only offers the lowest award fares on specific days. And searching for the best awards on specific days can be incredibly time-consuming.

But there’s a trick to find the best award availability for your destination and dates on the Air France USA website. And it all starts on the search page after you log in.

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While you can search for Flying Blue awards by travel dates, the best strategy involves leaving the dates blank in the search function and looking at the entire award calendar month by month.

In this example search, I'm looking for a one-way business-class flight from Chicago, Illinois (ORD) to Paris, France (CDG). I left the dates blank so I could search for award availability by month.

As you can see in the results, the months of November, January, and February all have at least one date with the lowest possible award cost of 60,000 miles for a business-class flight. (I completed these example searches a few months ago.) You could also toggle ahead beyond March to check future months for availability.

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When you click on a month that has the availability you want, you will see the full calendar of availability for that month.

As you can see, there were 14 dates in January offering the best possible business-class price for this flight. When you pick any of the available dates, you can see the exact flight options and book if you have the miles in your account.

While this Flying Blue search strategy may seem like a small adjustment, trust me when I say that it can save you a boatload of time.

If you input dates into the Air France website during search, you can spend hours looking for the award availability you want. Skipping the dates lets you search the award calendar by month instead, which makes it easier to hone in on the best options.

The effort is often worth it in the end. In the example above, you could book a nonstop business-class flight from Chicago to Paris (or vice versa) on an Airbus A350-900 in a lie-flat seat for 60,000 miles plus $242.80 in taxes and fees. Considering these itineraries often cost $3,000 or more per person, one-way, that's a sweet deal.

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