On 8 September 2026, Flying Blue split its Air France and KLM awards into three fares: Light, Standard and Flex. The headline number did not move. What that number buys did.
This is worth understanding before your next search, because the price you remember is still on the screen, attached to a different product.
Search Air France and KLM award fares →The price stayed. The fare shrank.
Take Paris to New York in business, the redemption Flying Blue is best known for. It is 60,000 miles in Light as of 22 September 2026, the same figure it was before the change.
Before, that 60,000 included two checked bags, lounge access, and the ability to change or cancel for a fee. Now it includes one checked bag and nothing else on that list. No lounge. No changes. No refunds.
To get back what 60,000 used to include, you pay 75,000. That is the whole change, stated plainly: nobody pays less than they did, and the cheapest fare does less than it did.
The three fares
Light is the entry price. One checked bag, two carry-on items, SkyPriority. No lounge access, no choosing where you sit in advance, and it cannot be changed or refunded.
Standard adds the second bag, lounge access, and changes or refunds for a fee. On the Paris to New York example that is 75,000 miles.
Flex is 110,000 miles and removes the fee on changes and refunds entirely. It also carries a noticeably lower cash surcharge than the other two, which matters more than it first appears on a route where the surcharge is heavy. We wrote about that trap separately in the surcharge trap.
The same split applies in economy. Between the United States and Europe that is 25,000 in Light, 30,000 in Standard and 50,000 in Flex. Within Europe, economy Light starts at 10,000.
What it does not touch
Partner awards are unchanged. If you are booking a SkyTeam partner through Flying Blue rather than an Air France or KLM flight, you are still buying the single fare you were buying in August.
Tickets issued before 8 September keep what they were sold with. This is not retroactive.
Elite status still opens the lounge door. If you hold status, the change costs you less than it costs everyone else, which is worth saying because most coverage of it is written by people who have status.
What to actually do about it
Check which fare a result is before you transfer anything. The number alone no longer tells you what you are buying, and that is a genuinely new thing to have to check.
On a trip you are confident about, Light is often the right answer. You were unlikely to change it, and if you have status the lounge is not in question. On a trip with any chance of moving, the gap between Light and Standard is the price of being able to change your mind, and that is a real thing to be buying.
Watch the cash side on Flex. A fare with a lower mileage price and a heavier surcharge can easily be the worse deal overall, which is the same argument as points vs cash applied inside a single programme.
Above all, do not assume the number you remember still means what it meant. That assumption is exactly what this change is built to catch.
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