One of our go to airlines to check out when flying to Europe as a family is AirFrance/KLM and it is for one reason: 25% discount on award tickets for kids 2-11 years old! Couple this with some of the lowest fares out there, it’s a winner. Obviously, it takes more effort to book travel when it includes children. Yes, of course we use points, duh! But it’s still MORE points and MORE taxes/fees. While I will always use credit card points/miles to find nearly free travel, I still always look for the best deals when doing so to get the most bang for my buck.
What is Flying Blue?
Flying Blue is the joint loyalty program that includes AirFrance and KLM. Each month Flying Blue comes out with a monthly deal that we were lucky enough to jump on months ago when they offered flights to Europe at a discounted rate. In fact, when I saw the deal and looked up our airport, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw we could fly as a family of 4 to London for just 12,000 miles! Now this was a promo running during August 2023. Each month there are different deals featured which I always tune into!
Taxes and fees
Anyone who tells you that you can fly for free using credit card miles is stretching the truth. You cannot travel for free but you CAN travel for ALMOST FREE! That is because there is no way to get around paying for taxes and fees when booking airline tickets. Taxes and fees vary from $5 to over $800 so it is definitely something to take into account when choosing tickets. That being said, I’ve noticed that flying to Europe does have some of the steeper taxes that I’ve seen. For example, flying from Seoul, South Korea to DC only cost us 88$ in taxes. Our flight to London will cost us $418 USD for our family of 4. To me, this is definitely well within my idea of almost free travel and was not a deal breaker.
<——THESE ARE THINGS TRUE TRAVELERS (LIKE YOU) KNOW.
We choose to take the EuroRail from London to Paris and fly home via Paris. Keeping with this same deal, I found flights home for the same deal- 12,000 miles/ticket. The only difference with flying home from Paris are the taxes are slightly more, coming in at $578 USD for our family. Again, totally worth it for us.
That means, 4 round trip tickets to Europe will cost us 96,000 points and $996 in taxes. It is quite incredible and I couldn’t pass it up!
Flying Blue discount
Like I mentioned before, I love KLM/AirFrance when traveling as a family because they offer a 25% discount on rewards tickets for children aged 2-11 years. For the purpose of this post I simply divided the numbers evenly by 4 because that is how it came out once the deal was done.
So next time you’re looking for a great deal to fly to Europe with your kiddos, don’t forget to check out the Flying Blue deal of the month as well as the reward flights with the discount for traveling with minors!
