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Update, 12/20: Flying Blue Director Ben Lipsey now writes that you can have your points transfer reversed back to the original bank!
You can call Air France or email Flying Blue (good luck with the case sensitive captchas) to request that reversal. You may want to wait a few days for agents to learn about the process, as reversals like this are pretty much unprecedented. Reversals will not be instant.
Kudos to Air France/Flying Blue for allowing a points reversal.
Update, 12/18: Flying Blue Director Ben Lipsey writes that all of these tickets have already been or will soon be canceled, except for Flying Blue Gold and higher elites who purchased 13.5K awards. It’s an interesting strategy, but there is logic to not angering your most valuable members.
He notes that the Flying Blue Promo Awards site shows a published price of 37.5K for business class from Canada to Europe, which is why they won’t be honoring the fare for most people. Whether your average consumer knows that in an era of dynamically priced award tickets is another question. That website is also not referenced on AirFrance.com at any point during the booking process. At any rate, the miles and taxes paid for canceled flights will be refunded over the coming days.
As these tickets don’t touch the US, they are not under DOT jurisdiction, but you can file a complaint with the CTA should you feel like doing so. At the very least, I’d certainly ask for Flying Blue to figure out a way to reverse any mileage transfers made so that customers are made whole. It’s funny how Flying Blue would charge 50 Euros for passengers to cancel an award ticket 3 days later, but the airline can do so without penalty.
You win some and you lose some in this game, but you always lose the shots you don’t take!
Update: DEAD! Don’t miss it if this becomes alive again. Sign up for deal notification alerts here!
Update: You can fly between Canada and Lille, France for just 1,500 miles. This consists of a nonstop flight to Paris and then a train to Lille, so you can always just claim your bags and skip the train. Make sure you book one-way travel.
Air France/KLM Flying Blue have been improving their program, but I didn’t expect to see it this improved. 😀
Flying Blue has incredibly cheap business class award prices between cities like Montreal, Ottawa, or Toronto and European cities like Antwerp, Athens, Bologna, Florence, Zagreb, and more. Post what other valid cities you find!
The Antwerp flights are nonstop flights to Amsterdam and then a Eurostar train to Antwerp, so you can always just claim your bags and skip the train. Make sure you book one-way travel.
Act fast if you want to take advantage of awards that start at just 13.5K miles each way for business class travel! Fuel surcharges do apply, though they’re not as onerous as with other European mileage programs.
You can book award travel at www.airfrance.us.
You can get the flexible award calendar by searching for a mileage ticket with an account on airfrance.us just leaving the date blank when searching for an award ticket.
Sample award calendars:
Post what deals you find!
HT: tmendy226, via DDF and Gary Leff
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60 Comments On "[Update: Dead, Points Can Be Reversed If Your Ticket Was Canceled!] SMOKING HOT! PRICE MISTAKE! Air France: Canada To Paris In Business Class For Just 1,500 Miles Each Way!"
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How do u search Antwerp?
ANR
Zwe was for train
Thanks Dan! How can one transfer points to Flying Blue and how quickly does the transfer happen? And any chance that these get cancelled?
Points transfer instantly from AMEX, Capital One, Chase, or Citi.
There’s always a risk of cancellation, but they would have to reimburse you for any expenses you incur. And they would have to cancel within the next few days.
just booked to Antwerp TY
Flight to AMS then Eurostar (so its optional as I need to collect bags)
Ha, shades of ZFV.
Awesome!
yessir
Can someone who is smart please explain this to me. Is this a deal that’s best for people who live in Canada? Or, do some people fly from the US to Canada to be able to take a business class flight to Europe for this amount of points?
For this price, it can definitely make sense to book a separate ticket to Canada to take advantage.
Can I get my points back or switch the date, if it doesn’t work out
Thanks vm –
Two caveats:
1 – Montreal to Zagreb one-way has $260 in fees
2 – Website says 50 Euro fee to cancel and reinstate miles
I am seeing flights for as low as 1,500 miles. Montreal to Lille as an example. Still has the same high price of a few hundo to book.
you are all most very welcome 😉
Be blessed
is the deal dead.. cant find this anymore ?
Are the Flights and Carrier Fees refundable if I cancel or they cancel?
can’t find anything from Lille back to Montreal though.
Anyone else currently unable to transfer points, Chase and Amex both wont work for me.
Re: the Lille deal mistake at 1,500 miles –
@Dan – I’m concerned actually that with a program such as FB, which has been historically known to shut down accounts for “violations” (even those that weren’t really), that they might go after account holders that do this.
What do you think?
Most tickets have a 257.10 fee.
even for free i dont care for france anyway to game.sell this to someone else
Ask I the only one seeing “sorry, we have no available flights on this date” when I search for Lille?
dead
Can you cancel a ticket within 24 hours of booking? I know this applies to flights originating in the US, but what about Canada
So… they’re not going to be that strict about skiplagging the train leg to Lille right? Thinking about just staying in Paris heh… Then again maybe not so bad to add in the extra net 20ish euros to day-trip it in Lille and return in the evening. (Since it’s 11ish euros for the RER to Paris from CDG anyway)
Just tried for the past 30 minutes and i keep getting an error after I enter names. Wah
Anyone was able to book Lille flight with 1500 miles? When I tried to book it, miles value changed to normal
Yes, I was able to book it for that amount. No issues and it was ticketed.
Deal seems dead to me for Montreal or Toronto. Please update as you see fit.
This is dead.
dead
I booked a one way Montreal to Lille for 1.5K and Air France just canceled my ticket. Any others got their tickets canceled as well?
Yes, app showing canceled , no email though.
I booked two one ways to/from Aix and two to/from Zagreb. The Aix bookings seem to have been cancelled although they haven’t sent an email or credited my account. The two Zagreb booking seem to be fine for the time being.
What has happened to others?
Same here
It’s interesting. I wonder if they are only cancelling the itineraries with and 3rd part train component.
@dansdeals
AF just cancelled mine
AF just cancelled mine.
YUL – LIL Cancelled. No points back yet. Amex posted already. Hope I don’t have to fight for tax refund
i tried the montreal – lille and its 60 K miles +242 usd
AF canceled my reservation last night. No email sent
I just checked AF account and my Toronto-Lille reservation hasn’t been cancelled yet, but seems it’s just matter of time.
So my flight got canceled. They didn’t send me a email. I checked the app and just saw. How would I get my miles back to my card? Since I only transferred it to Air France for this flight.
13.5k reservation cancelled
they labeled this as a promo fare – who am i to know what a ‘real’ price is in the absence of an award chart? the cash fare wasn’t zero, and actually the same as a other award tickets.
canada is having a lot of premium cabin deals these days with the slow canadian economy – how am i as a consumer to know what is ‘real’ or not? now i’ve been induced to transfer points over from another program that had more options.
af better reverse the points transfers back to chase/citi/amex, etc.
I wouldn’t count on those points going back to any card program. Everyone knew this was a big time mistake fare and AF wouldn’t be under any obligation to honor it. The EU allows carriers total control over mistake fares. This was like $20 with of points for a $2K+ flight. Win some, lose some.
10000 points is $200+ value and AF will sell you those points for much more
They also earn revenue from the banks for all the now orphaned point transfers they induced
Those points are not completely orphaned. At least 13.5k AF points can get you a decent value on a domestic Delta flight. I use VS and AF pretty regularly for Delta tickets in Y. One of the reasons I didn’t jump on this is because I would have had to transfer points from Amex that I was pretty sure was going to get nuked and I am already sitting on 130K VS miles transferred from Amex for tickets I had to cancel.
Sorry. $200 worth of pts. Not $20
“It’s funny how Flying Blue would charge 50 Euros for passengers to cancel an award ticket 3 days later, but the airline can do so without penalty.”
Someone should try sending them a bill for 50 euro.
13500 was a great deal but not an obvious mistake.
Seems to me they added the 1500 deal 24 hours later to make it obvious that it’s a mistake this way they can cancel everyone.
and the deal.just happened to go dead 2 hrs after shabbes.
New strategy for airlines dropped:
Step 1- Publish a “mistake” milage fare to get people to transfer points in from the bank.
Step 2- Never intend to honor the fare.
Step 3 – Get paid by the bank for the transfer immediately.
Step 4 – Profit
If regulators don’t treat milage transfers as non refundable items travellers booked on a mistake fare, airlines can just run this scheme every so often…
Anyone have any luck getting their points sent back to their credit cards (Amex/chase)?
I called Amex and they are telling me, once the points are transfered out they can’t come back. Maybe @ Dan can shed some light here
Why did you call AMEX?
I called them previously when I transfered points to aeroplan and my flight was canceled and they told me there’s no way it can go back to Amex once it leaves. I also have 4 tickets with air france to tlv on 1-24 and I have a feeling this will be canceled as well and would love to get those points back to Amex.
This isn’t for regular cases, this case is an exception.
So I guess/ assume this does exist?
I thought they don’t even have a way to reverse these transactions, this is news for me…
To the limited extent that some of these bookings got honored, a word of thanks is probably due to BenL at AF/FB to get the airline to agree to not bail out on all of these promo award bookings.