Flying Blue finally fixes its award search, making it easier to book award tickets
If you've used Flying Blue, the award currency for Air France and KLM, chances are you're well aware of its uber-obnoxious technical glitch when searching for award tickets.
Finally, Flying Blue award searches are working properly after years without a solution, as One Mile at a Time first reported.
What was the glitch?
You can search for Flying Blue award tickets on Air France or KLM's websites. To search for award space, you must first log in to your Flying Blue account and select "Book with miles" from the homepage.
Before the recent update, the site would bring you to a flight selection page displaying the various award prices after entering your search criteria. This used to be your single chance at booking without running into trouble, as any attempt to change your search by selecting "back," "change" or making other search adjustments would often trigger the aforementioned glitch.
Effectively, this glitch would terminate your search session because none of the search criteria could be changed. So, there were two common fixes:
- Move to the other airline's website (e.g., if searching on KLM's website, go to Air France's, log in to your Flying Blue account again and enter your alternative search preferences).
- Close your Air France or KLM tab, clear your browser cookies and restart your search.
- Use an Android (some readers reported this was an effective workaround, though TPG never confirmed it.).
This pesky glitch resulted in award searches taking much longer than they should have for travelers who didn't give up coping with this technical hurdle.
Related: The ultimate guide to earning and redeeming with Air France/KLM Flying Blue
Searching for Flying Blue awards
As previously suggested, Flying Blue has fixed this glitch at the time of writing. When you select the "change" button, you're now brought back to the original booking page without needing to log in again or clear your cookies.
Interestingly, your previous search gets a bit jumbled. In our tests, selecting the "change" button defaults the next search to a round-trip cash ticket with a departure date one day before your previously searched itinerary.
When you start by selecting "Book with miles," you can fix these details with a few clicks. While Flying Blue's search functionality still has room to improve, this is a big step forward from the now-fixed glitch.
Related: Doors, wireless charging and 4K video: A first look at Air France's new Boeing 777 business class
Bottom line
Flying Blue miles are some of the easiest to earn since they're transferrable from American Express Membership Rewards, Bilt Rewards, Capital One miles, Citi ThankYou, Chase Ultimate Rewards and Marriott Bonvoy. Not to mention, any day now, the program will be launching complimentary stopovers on award tickets, which will make the program even more appealing to frequent flyers.
For as long as I can remember, this troublesome technical glitch on Flying Blue's award tickets made searching for awards tiresome. Fortunately, you should now be able to do Flying Blue award searches without too much trouble.
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