Introduction

Choosing which airline points scheme to collect has always been a difficult subject for me. You’d think being from The Netherlands and close to Schiphol, it would be an easy decision to go all-in on Flying Blue for KLM, Air France and Sky Team flights.

There’s plenty of schemes like Airmiles, Amex, Uber and Flying Blue Shopping where you can directly earn points on your spend to boost your Flying Blue points fast.

Two of The Netherlands’ main card providers which you can use to collect Flying Blue points directly or convert their own points currency into them, are Revolut and American Express. I was actually writing this post within another post specifically about Revolut Revpoints vs Amex Membership Rewards / Flying Blue, but I felt this one deserved a spotlight on its own.

I use seats.aero, a reward flight search engine to alleviate huge amounts of time searching across various airline point schemes, so I can find a good points deal to a destination.

On a quick search today on seats.aero whilst writing this article - there’s a flight from Amsterdam Schiphol for 30.000 Flying Blue points and €182,48.

A good deal? Absolutely.

Very often, American Express cards will come with sign-up or referral bonuses exceeding this, so you could grab this by the reigns.

But before you jump at it - look how you’re getting back. Because it might not be the most cost effective, to come the same way you came. And if you’ve only got Flying Blue points, you might even be better off not using them at all.

I got a return flight from Amsterdam to Tokyo ✈️🇯🇵 for €272 return (plus 72k points)

I challenged myself 30 minutes to try and get to Tokyo for as cheap as possible in the very near future. I compared 4 different options to get to Japan with Flying Blue points, pure cash, pure Flying Blue points and a mix of Flying Blue and other alliance points. And I did it for €272 and 72k points. A bit of effort involved, but I was very happy with the result. Albeit I sacrifice a direct flight on the return, the points saved is totally worth it to me as I’d have saved enough to fly out all over again.

The winners:

⚠️ Yes! You can do this with less total points and get a direct KLM flight both ways with promo rates, but you’ve got to have your dates lined up and snatch it at the right time. This article is about the benefits of points flexibility when it matters to your schedule.

How I got there is all explained… but sorry, you’re going to have to earn it by reading all the below to fully understand how I got there.

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Finding the best deal at the time

Because I have flexibility on when I can go, I started off using seats.aero first to see when the most points/cost effective date is coming up. I made a quick search of upcoming flights to NRT (Tokyo, Japan) from Schiphol, and you see that I can redeem 30k Flying Blue points and just €182,48. Which is unbelievable value considering it includes a check-in bag and all other reward flight perks.

I then started looking for the flight on Google Flights to Tokyo on that date because it’s one of the most popular destinations at the moment and put in a return date of 2 weeks because that’s how long I’d want to spend there.

I saw the KLM flight so I checked the total price on the KLM website with a check-in bag included (because I really need one for that length of time and for the shopping).

So this turned out to be €1571,90 for Economy Standard (including a bag + seat selection at check-in). Not a bad price for a return direct flight.

I then checked the price on KLM for the return flights on that date and the dates around it. From this point is where my excitement started to dwindle. It was between 98.500 - 158.500 Flying Blue points plus €123,43 taxes for the return flight. This is significantly more points than I was hoping to use.

Then I thought “ok (mate)” - if with the flight out I am saving a lot of points and cash, perhaps I just pay in cash for the return KLM flight…

Wait, what…? It’s €1515 for just the flight from NRT to AMS in Economy Standard?

Then I have to pay 30k Flying Blue points + €182,48 to get there

Which equals €1.697,48 + 30k Flying Blue Points for my direct trip.

But it was €1571,90 for Economy Standard RETURN flight from AMS to NRT and back to AMS

I think the answer is clear here. This is not the way

So I thought: I need to look at alternative flights with other airlines. I checked seats.aero and there was some routes with American AAdvantage for just 35k points.

I clicked on one of the flights and I saw it was a Finnair journey. Even though I have no way of converting them to American AAdvantage points, Finnair is part of Oneworld alliance and their points currency is Avios.

So I headed over to Finnair to search for the reward flight with Avios. And there it is 42k Avios + 16720 JPY (<€90 on day of writing this).

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Points flexibility can often be the winner

If you’re just collecting Flying Blue points. You can’t convert them into Avios. So this is out the picture for you.

I use Revolut for my spending, which means I collect Revpoints and can convert those points to Avios at a rate of 1:1. You could also do this with your American Express Membership Rewards points, which if you’ve just signed up or referred someone to them, you might have a big fat MR points bonus you could convert into Avios to snatch this flight. But take into consideration the conversion rate at the time to see if it’s really worth it.

Skyteam / Flying blue only

When you look at booking the entire journey through a single lens, you can see exactly where the value falls apart. If you try to stick purely to Flyingblue or try to mix cash and points on a single airline, you can end up losing.

Fully Flying Blue points booking

Mix of Flying Blue points + cash booking

⚠️ The Reality Check: Because airline pricing algorithms heavily penalize one-way international cash tickets, buying a one-way cash ticket home costs €1,515 on its own. Pairing it with your outbound reward flight brings your total out-of-pocket cash to €1,697.48—which is actually more expensive than just buying a standard round-trip cash ticket (€1,571.90) and keeping your points in your account!

Mixing Alliances (Flying Blue + Avios)

By pivoting your return flight strategy to include other schemes such as Oneworld with a partner like Finnair, you can take advantage of so many more offers.

Caveat - it is possible to strike it both ways

I did find return flights with KLM for 30K Flying Blue points with seats.aero, but most of them were very last minute (this and next week). This is also a strategy many people pay is to wait until the last minute to book, as airlines look to fill empty seats on imminently upcoming flights.

But as you could see at the time I wanted to return, the options were limited. So you could do this whole exercise in reverse and maybe find a 30k FB points each way deal, which completely changes the maths of this. But the suggestion here is to keep flexibility with your points, as it can ultimately provide more efficient options for your actual plans.

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Conclusion

I don’t like to get myself tied up to one scheme otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of what I found out above. I do also have to counter balance the fact that whilst living In The Netherlands, because there is more ways of earning Flying Blue points on your spend than any other scheme, it can be tempting to go all out as I will reach a higher amount quicker (based on spend) - but in this example where it was a a 56.500 points difference to go on the journey with just Flying Blue points. It’s safe to say collection is not that much faster to make that route the more efficient one.