Different airline loyalty programs give members different pathways to earning elite status. As I’ve written about, I’m currently pursuing elite status with Air France-KLM Flying Blue, and am going for Platinum status in the program.
I recently wrote about the Flying Blue program’s unique elite status rollover feature, and in this post I wanted to look at the program’s unique opportunities to earn elite status by buying sustainable aviation fuel, and making donations to charity. This can help you earn status more quickly, and for some, it will prove worthwhile.
In this post:
Earn Flying Blue XPs with Air France-KLM’s sustainability efforts
Flying Blue uses XPs (“experience points”) as its elite qualification metric, and has three primary elite tiers — Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Elite status requirements differ based on whether you’re qualifying or requalifying for status:
- If you’re starting from scratch, you’d need 100 XPs for Silver status
- Gold status then requires 180 XPs; if you’re starting from scratch that means you’d need a total of 280 XPs, while if you’re already Silver or Gold, that means you’d need 180 XPs
- Platinum status then requires 300 XPs; if you’re starting from scratch that means you’d need a total of 580 XPs, while if you’re already Gold or Platinum, that means you’d need 300 XPs
With those basics out of the way, Flying Blue has two opportunities to earn XPs for doing good, and I wanted to go over the details of those in this post.
Earn Flying Blue XPs for donating miles to charity
Flying Blue lets you earn XPs for making donations to charity. Specifically, you earn one XP for every 2,000 Flying Blue miles that you donate to charity. You can choose from a variety of causes, ranging from education, to preserving sea life, to reducing poverty.
There’s no limit to how many XPs you can earn this way, and this doesn’t have to be done in conjunction with any flights. So in theory, you could just outright buy elite status this way, without ever stepping foot on a plane.
However, personally I think this is the much less interesting of the two opportunities. I wouldn’t consider this to be an efficient use of miles, even when factoring in that you’re doing good. It could make sense at the margins, if you’re a few XPs short of earning elite status, but I’d say that’s about it.
Earn Flying Blue XPs for buying sustainable aviation fuel
Flying Blue lets you earn XPs for purchasing sustainable aviation fuel to offset your flight. You can expect that you’ll get one XP for every €10 of sustainable aviation fuel purchased. To cover some of the basics of this opportunity:
- You can purchase sustainable aviation fuel only for Air France-KLM flights, and not for flights on partner airlines
- You can make the purchase any time between when you book your ticket and when you check-in for your flight
- You can purchase sustainable aviation fuel on both revenue and award tickets
- For a given itinerary, you’ll have the opportunity to purchase sustainable aviation fuel in one of three amounts, and those amounts will be based on the distance you’re traveling and the class of service you’re traveling in
- You only receive the XPs once you complete your itinerary, so you can’t book a ticket, buy sustainable aviation fuel, cancel it, and receive the XPs
- For those curious, sustainable aviation fuel purchases post to your credit card the same as airfare, meaning you should purchase it with a card that qualifies for bonus points on airfare (and if there’s an Amex Offers deal for Air France-KLM flights, that could work with this as well)
- The XPs from sustainable aviation fuel purchases should post to your account in the days following a flight, but sometimes they don’t post automatically, in my experience, and you need to contact customer service
So, how many XPs should you expect that you’ll be allowed to buy for a particular itinerary? Let me give a few examples of extremes.
On one end of the spectrum, a one-way Air France economy ticket from Paris to Amsterdam gives you the option of purchasing 1-3 XPs.
Meanwhile a one-way Air France business class ticket from Miami to Paris to Nice gives you the option of purchasing 16-114 XPs.
And on the other end of the spectrum, a one-way Air France first class ticket from Los Angeles to Paris to Singapore gives you the option of purchasing 57-561 XPs…
As you can see, you can rack up a lot of XPs with this system. To state the obvious, Flying Blue Platinum status requires 300 XPs on an ongoing basis, meaning you could “purchase” those 300 XPs for €3,000, and that would buy you the status (of course you’d still have to take some flights, but those could be award flights).
Should you earn Flying Blue XPs with these programs?
The above covers the basics of Flying Blue’s two programs that can earn you XPs for contributing to the carrier’s sustainability efforts. Are they worth it, though?
Let me of course note that it’s nice to contribute to good causes in general, though we should still crunch the numbers, since you can do good without essentially making a donation to an airline. Personally I wish the sustainable aviation fuel initiative were replaced with some sort of a reforestation initiative instead, since I question whether sustainable aviation fuel in its current form will ever become something that’s economically feasible.
With that out of the way, personally I don’t think there’s much value in earning one XP per 2,000 miles donated, since that’s a very high cost to rack up XPs, and I’d rather just separately donate to a good cause. It could make sense at the margins, if you’re maybe a few XPs short of an elite tier, but that’s about it.
I think the ability to earn XPs by purchasing sustainable aviation fuel is much more interesting. I’m not saying you should purchase this with every flight, but with a specific use in mind, I think it’s quite a good value.
Let me share this in the context of my own journey with trying to earn Flying Blue Platinum status. As mentioned above, Platinum status requires 580 XPs if starting from scratch, or 300 XPs if you’re requalifying. Here’s how I’m getting there:
- It’s possible to get a Flying Blue Gold status match in the United States at the moment, either if you have Bilt Platinum status, or through the status match campaign (which is paid); if you have Gold status, you only need 300 more XPs to earn Platinum status
- The Air France-KLM Card in the United States offers up to 100 XPs as part of its welcome bonus, so if you combine that with crediting some flights to Flying Blue, this could be a way to supplement that
- I’m trying to get to Flying Blue Platinum status as fast as I can, so on a recent transatlantic itinerary I purchased 114 XPs for $1,213 (I also had an Amex Offers deal for $200 off an Air France-KLM purchase), and I’m now very close to Platinum status
- So while I don’t plan on buying sustainable aviation fuel on an ongoing basis, I think in certain situations it could be worthwhile, especially if you’re aiming for a certain elite tier
If nothing else, the cost to purchase sustainable aviation fuel is a useful reference point for the rate at which you can rack up XPs, and also to qualify for status.
Bottom line
The Air France-KLM Flying Blue program gives members the opportunity to earn elite status by purchasing sustainable aviation fuel or donating to charity. I’d say the better deal is buying sustainable aviation fuel, as you can usually rack up XPs for €10 each this way. Meanwhile you can earn one XP for every 2,000 miles donated.
This won’t be something with mass appeal or that represents a great value for most, but it’s worth being aware of, especially at the margins. I appreciate this opportunity for members to engage in the program without flying.
Anyone see value in earning Flying Blue XPs with this sustainability program?
I logged in to an award ticket I currently have booked but when I click on the ability to purchase carbon offsets it doesn't show how many XPs I would earn for each of the three options. It does show how many kg it would reduce carbon emissions and the price in USD and miles but no mention of who many XPs I would earn. Does anyone know how to get that to show? Thank you in advance!
This is about the only way I'd consider buying SAF. Admittedly, it has a Tetzel-esque quality to it...
...but when you consider the impending rollover cap, opting to rack-and-stack XPs this year for someone "in the hunt" for lifetime status might not be an insane decision. Taking the extreme of it, that LAX-CDG-SIN trip, if booked as a round-trip with the same SAF buy in each direction and you'd potentially walk away with 1362 XP...
This is about the only way I'd consider buying SAF. Admittedly, it has a Tetzel-esque quality to it...
...but when you consider the impending rollover cap, opting to rack-and-stack XPs this year for someone "in the hunt" for lifetime status might not be an insane decision. Taking the extreme of it, that LAX-CDG-SIN trip, if booked as a round-trip with the same SAF buy in each direction and you'd potentially walk away with 1362 XP (120 each way for the flights, 561 each way for the SAF)...which under the terms of the rollover would potentially kick out four years of Platinum for Life. Now, this would probably cost something like $30,000 (not joking on that price), but if you've got $60k laying around and REALLY wanted lifetime status on AF...
Just as a counterpoint to buying sustainable fuel credits, Shell just canceled their huge 820,000 tons of biofuel a year project in Rotterdam.
They used to have reforestation credits too, but since those initiatives were largely shown to be of questionable value, they've disappeared.
The point of this is exactly to make mileage runs pointless. You'll find from time to time among calls to ban FF programs the appeal to the mileage runner: these programs encourage people to fly so much, they'll go on a CO2-spewing trip just to earn points. Now FB has made the mileage...
They used to have reforestation credits too, but since those initiatives were largely shown to be of questionable value, they've disappeared.
The point of this is exactly to make mileage runs pointless. You'll find from time to time among calls to ban FF programs the appeal to the mileage runner: these programs encourage people to fly so much, they'll go on a CO2-spewing trip just to earn points. Now FB has made the mileage run practically moot and figured out how to profit from it.
Ben, speaking of tree planting, what happened with One Tree at a Time (or whatever it was called)? I remember something about that from maybe a few years ago.
One way to think of this is as an alternative to a pure mileage (more properly, XP) run to keep status (e.g. where you'd be doing an immediate turnaround at the destination or otherwise not seeing anything besides the inside of your hotel.
I’m a bit confused by Luckys “10€ = 1XP” calculation. As I can see in the first example it contained “16$ = 2XP”. I assume this is some rounding that is going on, but in that case it would make extra sense for those short flights to buy XPs when it rounds in a positive way.
For SAF purchases, it rounds up, so it's 1 XP per 10 euro (or portion thereof): 1 euro of SAF is 1 XP, at the extreme, though 1 XP in isolation is rarely worth much of anything: even if you're taking enough short flights to accumulate a meaningful amount of XP from SAF, you're getting far more than that from the (likely expensive) flights.
Note that the option to donate to charities has a limit imposed by FB. This means that as the year progresses, the charities to which one can donate reach quota levels and are no longer available (and this is indicated in the donation page), so if one decides to top up at the end of a calendar year by donating, your choices of charity may be limited or non-existent by that point.
A word of caution about the SAF purchases... it's not uncommon to have to chase AF Flying Blue to get the XP's credited. I tried this once, and the timing of when the credits finally posted made it a waste of money for me as I missed a critical window. Make sure you know what you're getting yourself into before buying something that has no tangible value, other than buying your way up in status with AF/KL.
If the SAF XP is not posted together with the flight, all it takes is a two-minute chat with Flying Blue to correct that. Done it myself on several occasions.
"You can purchase sustainable aviation fuel only for Air France-KLM flights, and not for flights on partner airlines"
I'm not sure this is 100% accurate. You can buy SAF on a direct flight from the US to LHR, perhaps due to the JV nature of the flight which means these metal neutral flights are effectively AF/KLM flights.
Actually I'll add a correction, it seems other partner marketed flights bookable on AF/KLM have the option to purchase SAF.
I looked up CDG/ICN on Korean Air, which is not a joint venture partner, and SAF options were available.
It works if you’re ticketed with AF/KLM.
SAF is not an option if you’re ticketed with a partner airline but operated by AF/KLM (for example, Delta ticket but operated by AF).