Flying blue points are about to expire - Ideas welcomed
 

My husband & I EACH have 6450 FB miles, they are about to expire on New Years Eve. We will not be going anywhere but are interested in NOT losing them, as we'd like to travel in Europe in 2011...Any suggestions?

We wonder if there is an exchange to Loyalty group airmiles possible somewhere (something like points.com) or to skymiles (I think we have an 'old' account there as well)

Otherwise we will just donate them to a KLM charity, I suppose.

Whoops, I should have said "we'd like to travel in Europe in 2012"

Go to the FB page and look for earning opportunities. I know domestic US airlines have many options; don't know about FB but it's worth a shot.

Unless you manage to earn almost 20,000 points each, you won't be able to do much with so few miles - a one-way reward ticket (e.g., Paris-Madrid) is 25,000 miles.

If you still want to save your miles, your options include the following:

- fly with a partner airline (but I'm assuming you don't have any flights planned before year-end)
- stay in a hotel partner (e.g., Marriott, Hilton, Starwood etc) - but again I'm assuming you don't have any trips with hotel stays planned before the end of the year
- rent a car and earn FB miles (eg with Avis, Hertz, National or Sixt)

If those options aren't practicable, your best option might be to buy something online from the Air France eshopping website. Christmas is coming - maybe a child in your family would like a model Concorde? I believe you can order things from this website and have them delivered in the U.S.

Note that I have found FlyingBlue to be quite unreliable when it comes to posting points earned with partners. I've almost never received the points automatically and at least 1/4 of the time I never got the points even after writing to them and demanding them.

Are you absolutely certain that one can keep FB miles from expiring by buying something on the AF website? Or by booking a hotel-partner stay?

I remember asking about this once and being told that they could keep current only by taking another flight....am I remembering incorrectly?


What about transferring miles into FB from Amex--would that work?

ekscrunchy - You have a good point. I'd forgotten that Flying Blue is stingier than most other airlines. You do have to take a flight (either with Air France or another SkyTeam member) every 20 months to keep your miles alive.