About two weeks ago I finally reached Flying Blue Gold status! I’ve been working toward this for about a year and a half, so I’m pleased I’ve finally been able to get to this status level. Let me explain a little bit about what Flying Blue is, what Gold status is all about, and how I reached it.

Note that I do plan a larger series around airline status and how different airlines in the US and abroad make you qualify for status. Think of this as a small preview of that series, which, in addition to what is discussed below, will also talk about the worth of an airline’s status for travel on partner airlines, and the use of miles for award ticket bookings.

Update: I recently posted about how Flying Blue status saved me $358 in free seats, checked luggage and lounge access!

1. What is Flying Blue and why do I pursue status in it?
2. What perks does Gold status provide?
3. Earning status with Flying Blue
   1. To earn status, you accumulate XP
   2. Flying Blue makes you earn ‘XP’ to qualify for status through several methods
4. How I qualified for Flying Blue Gold status
5. Was it all worth it?
6. Summary

What is Flying Blue and why do I pursue status in it?

Flying Blue is the loyalty program of the Air France-KLM airline group, which includes Air France, KLM and their leisure airline subsidiary Transavia. The first two are members of the SkyTeam alliance which also includes Delta and Virgin Atlantic, Korean Air and China Airlines, among others. Indeed, the program is used by both of them so you can earn and redeem points by spending money on either carrier, as well as Transavia.

For a long time, Flying Blue was a very attractive program due to its good transatlantic award ticket redemption opportunities. Unfortunately there have been some changes that have seen the minimum award price go up to 60.000 points (from 50.000 points), putting it more in line with competitor’s prices, as well as some reduction in the number of award tickets in premium cabins at that price point. That is to say, you can still find them, but it’s not as straight forward as it used to be, with many award redemptions being significantly more expensive than the ‘saver’ level of 60.000 points.

So given that, why would I pursue status with Flying Blue? There’s three primary reasons:

• Being Dutch, and even though I live in New York, KLM is my hometown airline and provides nonstop connectivity to the Netherlands, and one-stop connectivity to an impressive array of destinations in Europe and beyond. Plus, I do tend to like the service on KLM.
• Flying Blue is not so difficult to gain status in, compared to for example Delta, because it doesn’t completely rely on the amount of money spent with the airline. I’ll go into how that works in a moment.
• Finally, Delta is usually my preferred US airline because it’s generally reliable and has an extensive network out of New York-JFK (I really do not want to go to Newark…), and as a SkyTeam alliance partner of Air France-KLM, I can benefit from flying Delta, and vice versa if I fly Delta my Flying Blue status will give me perks.

So, with that out of the way, let’s have a look at Gold status.

What perks does Gold status provide?

At the base level, Flying Blue only gives you the option to earn and redeem miles at the base rate of 4 miles per Euro spent. You gain additional perks when you hit silver, such as 1 free piece of luggage, priority boarding, and free standard seat selection. When you hit Gold, Flying Blue’s middle tier status, the perks hit their sweet spot with priority access throughout all stages of your journey and lounge access. This is fairly common across various airline frequent flyer programs. These are the most interesting perks of Flying Blue Gold:

• Earn 7 Miles per euro spent
• Free access to SkyTeam lounges worldwide with a guest. For this to apply, you need to be flying internationally, or transferring between domestic and international flights (or vice versa) operated by SkyTeam airlines.
• SkyPriority: priority access throughout the airport. This includes check-in, security and boarding.
• Free seat options 72 hours before departure. Specifically, you get a free standard economy seat at booking, and free economy comfort seat choie 72 hours before departure.
• One free extra checked baggage item on SkyTeam flights.

So, basically, with Flying Blue Gold status you should be able to book a standard Economy ticket, and yet still have a business class-ish ground experience and fly in Economy Comfort, without paying extra for any of those services.

From my experience, if you book for flights on KLM and Air France, your status seems to apply even if you book on a basic economy ticket, but every airline has different rules and the status may not map 1:1 to every airline within SkyTeam. This sad reality does mean that you need to check ahead of time which perks transfer and which don’t. Fortunately, the priority and lounge rules do seem to transfer, whereas the luggage and seat selection may not always (but on Delta it seems they do).

Earning status with Flying Blue

Now for the strategy bit that may be of most interest to all of you. How did I actually reach Gold Status? Before I get into how I did it, first let’s go over how you qualify for status with Flying Blue.

To earn status, you accumulate XP

When you accumulate the XP, you have to reach certain limits in order to qualify for status. Flying Blue publishes the following qualification tiers:

• To qualify for Silver status, you have to accumulate 100XP.
• To qualify for Gold status, you have to accumulate 180XP.
• To qualify for Platinum status, you have to accumulate 300XP.

The way this works is that you get a year to qualify for the Silver tier. Once you hit the qualifier, the XP counter and the clock reset: now you have a year to earn 180XP and get to Gold. Then, once you do so, the clock resets again and you have a new year to get to Platinum.

From this you probably realize that in order to get to platinum, you have to earn 580XP total, and you get up to 3 years to do so. What if you don’t get enough XP to get to the next level?

• If you’re on Gold and get 200XP, you’ll maintain Gold status and your ‘extra’ 20XP will be rolled over to the next year (since you needed 180XP to maintain status).
• If you’re on Gold and get 160XP, you will drop down to Silver, and keep 60XP for the next year.

So importantly, not qualifying for status won’t just drop you to the bottom: you will drop down one level instead.

Flying Blue makes you earn ‘XP’ to qualify for status through several methods

Now that you know how you qualify for status, how do you earn the XP? There are several ways to do so:

1. The first method is to simply earn XP by flying with KLM, Air France or once of their partners (SkyTeam or otherwise). Flying Blue publishes a chart that shows you how many XP you earn for a flight. Essentially, it is broken down by the distance flown, and the class of service, with one exception: domestic flights always earn the least XP, regardless of distance. As such, if you fly from Paris to Lyon in economy, or from New York to San Francisco in economy, both flights would generate you 2XP. And, if fly from Amsterdam to Paris in economy, you’d earn 5XP, and from Amsterdam to New York in economy you’d earn 10XP, or 30XP in business class.

2. The second method is by buying sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). This seems to go at a rate of 1XP for 10 Euros, so if you’re paying in USD, it may be at about 11USD for 1 XP. Not every airline within SkyTeam seems to allow this, and even if they did, I’m not so sure how this would translate back to Flying Blue. So, this method would be primarily guaranteed if you’re flying with KLM or Air France.
3. The third method is by donating your miles to charity. There’s a whole array of charities you can donate to on the Flying Blue website, and all of them earn 1XP for every 2000 miles donated. You can do this any time.
4. Finally, there’s something of a ‘secret’ method as well: get the Air France-KLM Mastercard. This will give you XP for approval, completing the spend requirement, and then 20XP every account anniversary.

It stands to reason that the ‘cheapest’ way to gain XP is by flying, as you get the XP ‘for free’ with the flight. I would also argue that the SAF is better value than the donation. I tend to be conservative with attributing value to miles and points, assuming 1 cent per mile. Thus, 2000 miles equated to 20 USD. Following that logic, donating miles is twice as expensive as buying SAF.

How I qualified for Flying Blue Gold status

So how did I go about earning status with Flying Blue? This is what I did:

1. I got the Air France-KLM Mastercard in March 2024, which had a special promotion at the time: 60XP upon approval, and then 40XP after completing the minimum spend within 3 months. As such, I received silver status by May 2024. The clock and XP counter were reset.
2. Then, I did a bunch of flying, and bought various amounts of SAF :
   • I flew roundtrip in economy comfort on Delta from new York to DC, which returned 4XP.
   • I flew from Boston to New York on Delta in economy, which provided me 2 XP. Incidentally, my silver status allowed me to select a preferred seat, get a free suitcase and allowed me to board early.
   • I flew back and forth from New York to Amsterdam in business class, which gave me 60XP, and I spent another~300$ to buy an additional 36XP for a total ~96XP.
   • I flew Air France in business class from New York to Lyon, which gave me 0XP since it was an award ticket. However, I bought enough SAF to get another 22XP.
   • Then, I flew three short intra-Europe flights, one in business (10XP) and two in economy (10XP), and bought additional SAF worth 15XP, which gave me another 35XP.
3. It had been a year since opening my credit card account, and this gave me 20XP.
4. Last but not least, I acquired the very last 1XP by donating 2000 miles.

This got me to exactly 180XP, and with that Gold status. At this point, the XP counter and clock were reset once again.

Was it all worth it?

How do you calculate the ‘worth’ of status? One way is to put a number on the services you received for free, that otherwise would have come at a cost. For example, by having Silver status on my Delta flight from BOS to JFK, I saved $10 on the preferred seat, $35 on the checked bag, and priority boarding wouldn’t have even be available without a Delta credit card or buying an economy comfort seat at an additional cost of ~$50. So, Silver status may have saved me $80-100 on this flight.

The problem begins, however, when you factor in the cost of the XP that I bought through SAF. The truth is that I probably spent on the order of $750 to buy the XP required to make it to Gold status, which is not a small amount. As such, ‘getting back’ that value means you have to fly quite a lot, and therein lies core issue with any frequent flyer status: it’s really only useful if you actually fly frequently.

And so the answer to this question is double:

• Yes, it’s worth it because the services you get can save you real money and definitely make the trip more comfortable thanks to priority services and lounge access. I recently was able to put a real dollar value on this when I booked a return flight from New York to Stockholm and back, where I saved $358 thanks to my Flying Blue Gold status!
• No, because for the couple times that I get to use the status, I probably won’t ‘regain’ my financial investment.

So ultimately, whether the answer is yes or no, will depend on whether you either 1) value the comfort over the cost of getting status, or 2) you are able to regain the investment. Unfortunately, for me, I may not be able to regain my investment, but I will say this: I do love the premium services it gives me!

Summary

I recently acquired Flying Blur Gold status, after a combination of earning status-qualifying activities, including flying, buying SAF, donating miles, and strategically applying for the Air France-KLM credit card. This brought me to accumulate 280XP total, which made me qualify for Silver status after about 2 months, and then Gold status after another year or so. This did include some financial investment, and ultimately you can wonder if it’s worth that investment. I will say, even though I don’t think I’ll actually recoup that investment, I do very much enjoy the premium services that I are available to me!

Do you have status with Flying Blue or another airline? I’d love to hear what your thoughts are!