Air France-KLM Flying Blue Credit Card Review: Worth It For Elite Status Chasers

Given the greater focus in the blogging world on this path to making La Premiere bookable with miles, I can’t help but wonder how air france will adjust their La Premiere award pricing and availability down the road to maintain the very exclusive experience they insist on maintaining.
I have a feeling a lot of first class points chasers will be left holding the bag in a couple years.

@ FoulOwl -- LaPremier is severely overpriced anyway. Save your miles and fly J three times instead of F once. With much-improved business class seats these days, international first class is often (not always) not worth the additional cost.

The whole point of this is Ben's first 2 bullets about the value of FB Plat-

-Flying Blue Platinum members gets access to more award space, which is an incredibly valuable perk
-With the recent Flying Blue devaluation we saw, Flying Blue Platinum status still allows me to book the “Light” fares while being able to have ticket flexibility, access lounges, select seats, etc.

If you're chasing this for one LP redemption, it of course makes no sense.

To reach 280 XPs (Gold status) in your second year (when you no longer receive the welcome bonus), you would need to spend $85,000 on the Air France KLM Flying Blue Credit Card if i am not mistaken. Silver status basically gets you nothing.

You can get FB Gold within the 1st year with this card from scratch even without flying. The signup bonus deposits on the statement day during which you meet the spending target, at minimum 1 month after your signup date/anniversary date. This triggers level up to Silver and starts a 12-13 months period to get another 180XP for gold (FB give you 12 months + until the end of the calendar month to meet the next XP target). The anniversary bonus of this card deposits on anniversary date, which is at most 11 months from your level up to Silver date, well within the 12-13 months period. As long as you make another 20XP during that time, you can hop on to Gold exactly on the 1st anniversary of having this card. One of the best way without flying is to sign up for the Overseas Discount Pass. It's 269 euro per year and give you 20XP every year without any requirements

"Note that you can also add authorized users to the card at no extra cost, and of course their spending will help you earn Flying Blue miles, and potentially XPs."

Fun fact about BoA cards: they don't know how to manage AUs, so instead of looking at the competition, they give you a "worst of the worst" configuration:
1. It has the same number as the primary account. So if your primary account is compromised or expires, all AUs need to change too.
2. They can't add AUs to Apple Pay (I just learned this about the Summit card today) - instead only the primary can add it to cards via the BoA app, since they don't support direct Apple Pay enrollments.
3. AUs don't get online profiles to check their spending / budgeting / add to Apple Pay (as discussed above)

Long story short, you are definitely getting a "$0" experience with their AU benefit.

Ben,

Great review as always.

I just applied and was approved for this card. I have a question. Do you get the 3x Flying Blue miles for using the card to pay the surcharge on a miles redemption? My inclination is you do not but it would be great if you did given the high surcharges AF charges these days.

Thanks!

KLM/AF program is way too complicated (ie extractive) and has been way to devalued lately (ie extractive). Hard pass.

Now maybe if they added value for partners (more seats, better rates, etc) we can talk.