Flying Blue adds discounted award tickets for kids, other family-friendly benefits

Air France-KLM Flying Blue is getting a lot more valuable for families.

On Tuesday, the loyalty program officially unveiled its new "Flying Blue Family" program, which includes a series of new features designed to make it easier for families to earn and redeem miles and take advantage of elite benefits.

As TPG UK reported last week, Flying Blue members can now pool their miles with their relatives. But Flying Blue didn't stop there. The program now also offers a 25% discount on award tickets for children, no mileage expiration for members under 18 and parental leave for elite members.

Here's a rundown of all of the new features.

Discount on awards for kids

The biggest and most exciting change is that Flying Blue now offers a 25% discount on award tickets for children ages 2 to 11. The discount is automatically applied when searching online — the only requirement is that the child is traveling with an adult.

What's great about this discount is that it applies to all classes of service and partner flights. Based on our searches, taxes and fees are slightly lower for children too.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this discount stacks with Flying Blue Promo Rewards, which offer a rotating set of discounted destinations every month.

This month, Flying Blue is running Promo Rewards between Boston and Europe. In our tests, both the adult and child passengers are charged the same amount of miles when selecting the Promo fare.

Regardless, this is an exciting change considering that airlines generally only offer discounted awards for infants. A 25% discount is quite generous and can easily save families thousands of miles, even on a domestic U.S. economy award on Delta.

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Related: Tips for lap infant award travel

Family pooling

Flying Blue has always allowed miles to be transferred between accounts. However, this generally came with a hefty fee, which could defeat the whole purpose of the award.

Previously, free transfers were only available through the Share & Fly feature. This feature is only included with Flying Blue's cobranded American Express credit cards, and these cards aren't available in the U.S.

Now, anyone can share miles for free with the new Family Account feature. Flying Blue members can pool miles with up to eight relatives. That said, members are limited to two adults over 18 years old and six children.

To start your own Flying Blue Family account:

• Log in to the Flying Blue website and navigate to My Profile.
• Click "Flying Blue Family" in the sidebar menu and add your first family member.
• After doing so, you will automatically become the Flying Blue Family Leader.

Within a family, the designated Leader is the only one that can transfer miles into their account. You can only be part of one Flying Blue Family at a time, and you can only leave a family account once you have been a part of it for six months.

Related: Airlines that allow families to pool miles

No mileage expiration for kids and teens

Flying Blue miles usually expire after 24 months of no activity, meaning that a user hasn't earned or redeemed miles in this time frame. Effective immediately, members under 18 years old are exempt from mileage expiration. This is a more generous policy compared to some other European carriers.

Related: How to keep your child's miles from expiring

Parental leave for elite members

Finally, Flying Blue now allows new parents to put their elite status on hold. This means you can pause your benefits as you spend time at home with your new child and not stress about maintaining your status.

While details about this benefit are slim, these status extensions are generally for up to one year and are requested via email.

Related: Airlines that allow travelers to put elite status on hold

Bottom line

The Flying Blue program is very popular among award travelers as it offers many airline partners and the miles are extremely easy to earn, even for those based in the U.S. You can transfer in miles from any major transferable points currency, including American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One, Citi ThankYou, Chase Ultimate Rewards and Marriott Bonvoy.

Now, the program is even more attractive for those traveling with children, thanks to a generous discount on awards for children, along with several other family-friendly features.