Book Air France & KLM with Virgin Atlantic Miles

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Your Virgin Atlantic miles just became more valuable.  Thanks to Virgin Atlantic’s new partnership with Air France and KLM, it’s now possible to book Air France and KLM flights with Virgin Atlantic miles.  This is great news because it dramatically increases options for flying between the US and Europe, within Europe, and between Europe and many other destinations.

Awards for flying Air France and KLM can be booked on Virgin Atlantic’s website.  You can even book Air France Premium Economy online, and I found that those awards were wide open on the routes I checked.  More on this below.

Virgin Atlantic has reasonable award rates and their miles are incredibly easy to get. In fact, you might already have access to Virgin Atlantic miles indirectly: Amex Membership RewardsCiti ThankYou Rewards, and Chase Ultimate Rewards all transfer 1 to 1 to Virgin Atlantic.  And both Amex and Citi are known to occasionally offer transfer bonuses so that you’ll get more than 1 Virgin Atlantic mile for each point transferred.  See our Current Transfer Bonuses page for up-to-date information about which transfer bonuses are currently available and which ones have been available in the past.

Another great way to earn miles is with the Virgin Atlantic credit card which earns 1.5 miles per dollar for all spend in addition to incentives for high spend.  For an in-depth analysis of this card, see: Virgin Atlantic World Elite Mastercard Deep Dive: Maximize Earnings and Status.

Virgin Atlantic also has low award change and cancellation fees. Virgin Atlantic charges only $50 per passenger.  Even better, on awards that incur less than $50 in taxes and fees to book, you’ll lose those fees, but you won’t have to pay $50 to cancel and get your miles back.

What about Delta?

As has long been the case, you can still use Virgin Atlantic miles to book Delta award flights.  But the award prices for using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Delta are different than the award prices for flying Air France or KLM.  In some cases it’s cheaper to fly Delta, but in other cases it’s cheaper to fly Air France or KLM.  For details about using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Delta, see: How to book Delta flights with Virgin Atlantic miles.

You can also use Delta SkyMiles to fly Virgin Atlantic, Air France, or KLM.  Delta doesn’t publish an award chart, so I recommend searching for these awards via Delta.com to find pricing for the dates you intend to travel.

Step by Step Guide to Booking Online

Here’s how to book Air France, KLM, and Delta flights online with Virgin Atlantic miles:

Enter your search criteria

Browse to virginatlantic.com and enter your origin and destination airports; select “round trip” or “one way” (I recommend booking one-way awards); select your travel dates, and the number of passengers.

a screenshot of a website

Set advanced search criteria

Click the “Advanced search” link, then select “Miles” under “How Are You Looking To Pay?”  Then choose whether to search for Economy, Premium, or Upper Class seats.  At the time of this writing, you can book Air France Premium Economy with Virgin Atlantic miles, but not with Delta or KLM.  With any of the three airlines, you can book economy or business class (Upper Class).

a screenshot of a computer

Find available award days

Not all flights and seats are available to partners, so there may be days with no seats available at all.  Or, if you’re lucky, you may find the exact flights you need.  Most often you’ll find a week long calendar view:

a screenshot of a flight schedule

Switch to 5-week view

If your initial search doesn’t reveal useful results, switch to the full 5 week calendar view.  Click “Calendar view” from the one-week result screen, to get to something like this:

a calendar with numbers and numbers

If needed, use the filter drop-down to filter to only direct flights.

Select and book your flight

Once you find a date that has award availability, click the link within that date to see available flights.  Here’s an example showing Air France flights from Atlanta to Paris:

a screenshot of a flight schedule

Dealing with online bugs and limitations

Pay with Points is grayed out

If the website only lets you choose to show price in “Money” and not “Points,” the workaround is to temporarily change to a multi-city search, pick “Points” and then return to a one-way or round-trip search.

a screenshot of a flight schedule
This is an example of a route in which the Virgin Atlantic website won’t let you search for award flights. The option to show the price in points is grayed out.
a screenshot of a flight ticket
The first step of the solution is to switch the search to “Multi city” and pick “Points”. You can now return to a one-way or round-trip search.
a screenshot of a flight schedule
After selecting “Points” on the Multi city display, you can return to “One way” or “Round trip” and the system will retain the “Points” selection.

Destination doesn’t auto-complete

This problem used to happen regularly, but it seems to be mostly fixed.  Still, if you type in your destination city and the text box doesn’t auto-complete, you have two options:

  1. Type the destination into the departure airport text box and then copy and paste it into the destination box.
  2. Use the map icon to find your destination from a drop-down list.

Airport not found

Many foreign airports aren’t loaded into the Virgin Atlantic system. If you want to book flights to one of these airports, it can’t be done online.  You’ll have to contact Virgin Atlantic to book those flights.

Contact Virgin Atlantic to confirm and book

Before moving points from a transferable points program to Virgin Atlantic, I recommend contacting Virgin Atlantic Flying Club to confirm that the award you want is really available and to confirm what they’ll charge.

Below you’ll find Virgin Atlantic Flying Club’s contact information.  :

Customer Centre: +1 800 862 8621
Reservations, Customer Service and Flying Club
Opening hours: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Comparison to Air France award prices

Air France Flying Blue miles are arguably even easier to get than Virgin Atlantic miles.  In addition to transferring one to one from Amex, Chase, and Citi (as does Virgin Atlantic), Air France miles can be transferred from Capital One at a ratio of 1,000 Capital One “miles” to 750 Air France miles.  And Air France award change fees are just as low as Virgin Atlantic’s (about $50).  So how do the Air France award prices compare to Virgin Atlantic’s?

Air France doesn’t publish award charts so it’s hard to compare apples to apples.  Instead I picked a route to compare…

Single Route Comparison (Air France vs Virgin Atlantic miles)

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a screenshot of a website

Virgin Atlantic Award Prices flying Air France, Paris to Washington DC

I converted award fees priced in Euros to US Dollars:

  • Economy: 22K + $197
  • Premium Economy: 34K + $197
  • Business Class: 58.5K + $386

Air France Award Prices flying Air France, Paris to Washington DC

  • Economy: 27.5K + $152
  • Premium Economy: 53.5K + $218
  • Business Class: 55K + $354

Conclusions from this one example:

  • Economy pricing is similar.  Virgin Atlantic charges slightly fewer miles but also a bit more in fees.
  • Premium economy is far cheaper with Virgin Atlantic miles
  • Business Class pricing is roughly the same, but Air France is slightly cheaper

Thoughts about Air France vs Virgin Atlantic award bookings

From the one example shown above, it appears that Virgin Atlantic offers much cheaper Premium Economy awards.  That said, Air France’s award prices fluctuate based on unknown factors.  One interesting thing I’ve seen with Air France, is that it is often cheaper to fly farther.  For example, it may be cheaper to fly from Rome to Washington DC via Paris than to fly non-stop from Paris.

In general, I recommend always comparing award prices and fees through both programs before you transfer points into either program.

a map with blue dots
The above maps shows airports in North America served by Air France Premium Economy (map courtesy of flightconnections.com).  The highlighted area includes the airports that I believe are included in Virgin Atlantic’s definition of “Zone 6” (East Coast North America).  Zone 6 (East Coast North America & Caribbean) includes: East Coast USA, East Canada, Antigua, Barbados, Bahamas, Cuba, Bermuda, Dominican Republic, French Guyana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Caiman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Martinique, Haiti, Porto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago and Saint Marteen. Includes the following US states – Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Virginia, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida. Includes the following Canadian provinces – Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island

Award Charts

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You can find Virgin Atlantic Flying Club partner information here.  The partners listed as “Earn and Spend” are those where you can use Virgin Atlantic miles to book awards on the partner airline.

Standard vs Peak

Virgin Atlantic offers different award prices depending on whether you fly during standard or peak dates.  Here are the current dates for each for Air France and KLM flights:

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Connections Don’t Increase the Price

This is special.  When using Virgin Atlantic miles with Virgin’s own flights or with most other partners (including Delta), the award price is calculated for each leg of the journey and then added up.  For example, if flying Delta from New York to Los Angeles, with a layover in Detroit, the economy one-way award price would be 25,000 miles: 12,500 miles to fly NYC to Detroit plus 12,500 miles to fly Detroit to LA.

When flying Air France or KLM, however, the award pricing will be based on the origin and destination without respect to any layovers.  So, theoretically, you should be able to fly Atlanta to Paris to Rome for the same price that it costs to fly Atlanta to Paris alone (since Paris and Rome are in the same award zone)

Short Haul

When flying Air France or KLM within Europe, the following short haul pricing applies.  It’s great to see that you can fly one-way for as few as 4,000 miles (4,500 Peak):

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North & Central America to/from Europe

Virgin Atlantic’s award charts for Air France and KLM are extensive.  For those looking to fly between North or Central America and Europe, I pulled out the relevant award prices.  Note that you can book Premium Economy on Air France flights, but not KLM.

The following are one-way prices:

a table with numbers and a number of points
East Coast North America includes states as far west as Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Western & Central Europe includes countries as far east as Finland, Germany, Austria, and Italy.

Complete award charts can be found towards the end of this post.

Award Taxes & Fees

Fuel surcharges are imposed along with other standard fees (such as airport departure fees).  Fortunately, these fees are far lower than what Virgin Atlantic charges for flights to and from London.  Compared to using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Delta, the news is mixed.  Flying Delta from the US to Europe (other than London) costs only $5.60 in fees with Virgin Atlantic, but flying in the other direction results in fees similar to what you’ll find with flying Air France or KLM.  As a result, the ideal path in many cases is to use Virgin Atlantic miles to fly to Europe on Delta and to return on whatever is available: Delta, KLM, or Air France.

Through a number of award searches I found the following fees between the US and Europe.  Note the the actual fees will vary depending upon the route you fly.  Also note that I’ve estimated some of the fees based on current Euro to US Dollar exchange rates…

a table with price tags
East Coast North America includes states as far west as Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Western & Central Europe includes countries as far east as Finland, Germany, Austria, and Italy.

Here are a few award results showing these fees:

a screenshot of a flight schedule
Above you can see that business class (Upper Class) flights from Boston to Europe incur far lower fees on KLM flights than on Virgin Atlantic flights (which transition through London). Also evident is the very low fees when using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Delta from the US to Europe (this is not true for flights to London though).
a screenshot of a screen
This award search result for flying Air France shows that flights from Europe to the US East zone incur the same fees for economy and premium economy. Fees for flying business class are twice as much.
a screenshot of a flight schedule
This award search result for flying Air France shows that flights from the US East zone to Europe incur the same fees for economy and premium economy. Fees for flying business class are twice as much.

Complete Zone Based Award Charts

The following are the complete zone based award prices for using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Air France and KLM.  All prices are one-way.  Note that Premium Economy awards are not available on KLM.

Zones: 1) Western and Central Europe; 2) Eastern Europe and North Africa; 3) Middle East and Russia; 4) Central Africa; 5) Southern Africa, Indian Ocean and Indian Subcontinent; 6) East Coast North America & Caribbean; 7) West & Central North America and Central America; 8) South America; 9) Far Eastern Asia and Eastern Russia; 10) Oceania;

a screenshot of a table
Zones: 1) Western and Central Europe; 2) Eastern Europe and North Africa; 3) Middle East and Russia; 4) Central Africa; 5) Southern Africa, Indian Ocean and Indian Subcontinent; 6) East Coast North America & Caribbean; 7) West & Central North America and Central America; 8) South America; 9) Far Eastern Asia and Eastern Russia; 10) Oceania;

Zone Definitions

Flights that don’t qualify for short haul pricing are priced based on zone to zone award prices.  Virgin Atlantic defines the following award zones for Air France and KLM flights:

  • Zone 1 (Western and Central Europe) includes:
    UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Denmark, Balearic Islands, Finland, Italy, Malta, Norway and Sweden.
  • Zone 2 (Eastern Europe and North Africa) includes:
    Albania, Algeria, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Canary Islands, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Libya, Lithuania, Latvia, Macedonia, Madeira, Moldavia, Morocco, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, West Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Tunisia, Ukraine, Montenegro, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. West Russia includes the following Federal Districts – Central Federal District, North-western Federal District, Volga Federal District, Southern Federal District and North Caucasian Federal District.
  • Zone 3 (Middle East and Russia) includes:
    Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Central Russia, Egypt, UAE, Georgia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Syria, Qatar, Uzbekistan and Djibouti.  Central Russia to include the following Federal Districts – Urais Federal District and Siberian Federal District.
  • Zone 4 (Central Africa) includes:
    Benin, Burkina, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Congo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Uganda, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan, Republic of South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Chad, Zambia and Sierra Leone.
  • Zone 5 (Southern Africa, Indian Ocean and Indian Subcontinent) includes:
    Angola, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Rodrigues, Reunion Island, Seychelles, Mayotte, Comoros, Madagascar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
  • Zone 6 (East Coast North America & Caribbean) includes:
    East Coast USA, East Canada, Antigua, Barbados, Bahamas, Cuba, Bermuda, Dominican Republic, French Guyana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Caiman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Martinique, Haiti, Porto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago and Saint Marteen. Includes the following US states – Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Virginia, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida.  Includes the following Canadian provinces – Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island
  • Zone 7 (West & Central North America and Central America) includes:
    Central & West USA, Hawaii, Central & West Canada, Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Nicaragua.  Includes the following US states – Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, California, Hawaii and Alaska.  Includes the following Canadian provinces – Nunavut, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Northwest Territories, British Colombia and Yukon.
  • Zone 8 (South America) includes:
    Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.
  • Zone 9 (Far Eastern Asia and Eastern Russia) includes:
    China, South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, East Russia (& Siberia), Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Macau, Myanmar, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.  Eastern Russia to include the following Federal Districts – Far Eastern Federal District.
  • Zone 10 (Oceania) includes:
    Australia, Fiji, Guam, Marianas Islands, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, New Zealand, Palau Islands, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia and French Polynesia.
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