Awhile ago, I bartered with a friend of mine. She watched our kids for a weekend when we went to Puerto Rico, and in exchange, I’d use my miles to book her a roundtrip ticket anywhere in the US. We’ve had a few stops and starts but last night I finally was able to actually book her ticket. She is heading to Boston over Thanksgiving and given the holiday weekend, fares were pretty expensive.
Thankfully (pun alert!) I was able to find saver award availability on the dates she was looking for (she is flying back on Saturday rather than Sunday or she’d have been out of luck). We had to book this flight as an open jaw flight (CVG-BOS; MHT-CVG), because the only availability coming back from Boston was too early.
(SEE ALSO: What is an open jaw flight? Or a stopover? Layover? What’s the difference?)
The flight out of Manchester is a connecting flight and is still early, but a little more convenient for her schedule
Booking a Delta flight with Air France
There is saver availability showing on Delta.com, so you can see the flight on Air France’s website
All looks good until I got to the confirmation page, where it deducted 25,000 miles for the flight!
You can see that the outbound leg (direct flight from Cincinnati to Boston) correctly deducted 12,500 miles for a one-way economy flight but on the 2nd flight (from Manchester back to Cincinnati via Detroit) I was charged 25,000 miles
I actually had a bit of a “uh-oh” feeling when I saw the 25,000 mile amount that I had somehow screwed something up (SEE ALSO: The worst feeling in the world: Screwing up a travel booking) but when I went back I saw that not only was the flight listed at 12,500 miles, there were still seats available at 12,500 miles. I screenshotted and prepared to call in
Calling Flying Blue
I found the US number for Flying Blue which was for some reason alphabetized under B for “Bermuda / Canada / United States” and after a brief hold spoke to someone who addressed me as Carolyn. 🙂
Thankfully he didn’t make my wife get on the phone (it was her account) because OH BOY does she love talking to banks and airlines! I gave him my record locator and after a few minutes, he came back on the line and said that he saw the problem, had sent it to the right department and that I should have my miles back in 48 hours (they’re actually already back in the account)
I asked what had happened and I THINK he said (there was a bit of a language barrier) that sometimes the system charges double the amount for connecting flights.
Has anyone else ever been double charged when redeeming Flying Blue miles?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
OKAY. I HAVE BEEN HAVING A SIMILAR PROBLEM. I have been trying to book a domestic flight on AeroMexico and the booking system is trying to charge me 25k for some oneway tickets in coach–which is double! I couldn’t figure out why, but since there has to be a connection in MEX, that must be what’s happening. It’s also a pain because Alaska and Delta have stopped showing AeroMexico availability without notice so there’s no way for me to cross reference. Do you think I shoul call into Flying Blue to try to get this resolved?
I called in and they fixed it within 10 minutes
I was having the same issue with Flying Blue a couple months back. Instead of booking online, called and and gave the agent the flight information. She priced out the tickets at the correct amount of miles and within no time had the flight booked.
I tried to book 2 one-way awards on Flying Blue after transferring in 25k CITI points. After I verified I had the points in my Flying Blue account I proceeded to book. Everything looked good, but when I went to enter passenger information it said I didn’t have enough points!
It was past the call center hours so the next day I called and she easily (and quickly) processed my award. I don’t know what the problem was and I didn’t ask… I just wanted the award.
I got charged not twice the points but twice the taxes and fees for each ticket!!
Similar to Frank: charged more for the taxes than should have been ( 20% more when booking through an agent by phone after I could not complete the booking online). When I told the agent ( France based) there were some long sighs and a rather surly: ” I can cancel the booking if you prefer”. He could see the same amount for taxes as I could but insisted that it was wrong and that he couldn’t complete it other than by charging the higher amount. Painful and time consuming exercise and I didn’t bother pursuing it even though I had a screenshot of the lower amount.
This was for a KLM 2 flight promo award: Paris-Amsterdam-Dubai in J
A couple of years ago I had an issue with Flying Blue on an reduced mileage award ticket when revenue tickets could be changed due to bad weather but they didn’t want to change mine. After the helpful agent referred it to a supervisor, I was allowed to make the change instantly. Seems that what comes out of this story and the comments, is that Flying Blue service is excellent. Mistakes happen but it is how they are dealt with that separates the men from the boys!