[Becky]

Flying Blue is the name of the frequent flyer program.

Both Air France and KLM are part of the Flying Blue program

Sometimes airlines have alliances or partnerships where they will sell (for cash or points or often both) each other’s tickets.

Flying Blue just made a partnership with Etihad where Etihad is allowing Flying Blue members/customers to buy airline tickets through Flying Blue.

So those would be Etihad tickets sold on the Flying Blue website using Flying Blue points.

Virtually all airlines do not release ALL seats to partners, they would prefer to sell the ticket themselves to keep more of the money.

So some flights on Etihad may not be sold on Flying Blue, or for example Etihad may allow 3 seats to be booked with points but only allow 1 of those seats to be bought by partners.

People get excited about these partnerships because different programs price things in different ways, and so sometimes if Airline X is selling a ticket for 100,000 X points their Partner Airline Y may sell you the exact same seat on the exact same flight for only 50,000 points.

It is essentially a “foreign currency arbitrage” like concept in financial terms

That’s the simplest breakdown of airline partnerships that I can come up with.

[Isobel]

You would need to book through Flying Blue.

When you search flights you will see which ones are operated by Etihad, KLM, Air France, Virgin, etc.

If you don’t see it as an option, then that means there are no partner flights available.

[Nicolas Murazik]

I am not a newbie and have to admit, I didn’t quite understand where to go to find these flights either.

Air France or Etihad?

Glad you asked the question!