CNBC Points Pro: How to book a flight to France with points

Welcome to the Points Pro, where I answer your credit card and travel rewards questions.

In lieu of answering one of your questions this week, I’m going over how to use rewards to get to France, which was the most-requested destination in our recent poll. Follow CNBC Select on LinkedIn to be the first to know when the next poll goes live.

There are a lot of variables that go into using credit card rewards to book travel, which makes it complicated to identify the best way to book award flights to France.

The points price is only one consideration. There are also taxes and fees, which can be prohibitively expensive. The availability (or lack) of award seats can make certain programs a strong option or an impractical choice. On top of all that, some rewards are much easier to earn than others.

When you’re searching for flights, using tools such as Seats.aero, Point.me or AwardTool can make comparing prices and fees across multiple programs easy. If you can’t find the flights you want, these tools allow you to set alerts for when award flights become available.

Flying Blue is the loyalty program for Air France and the Dutch airline KLM. It operates a dynamic award chart and has monthly Promo Rewards that offer up to 25% off select award flights. You can view the current Promo Rewards and Flying Blue’s award calculator here.

The cost to fly one-way from North America to Paris is:

• Economy: Starting at 25,000
• Premium economy: Starting at 40,000
• Business class: Starting at 60,000

Why is Flying Blue a great program for getting to France?

Flying Blue is a transfer partner with every major U.S.-based transferable travel program. It’s easy to rack up Flying Blue miles because you can transfer to Flying Blue from all of the following programs at a 1:1 ratio:

Several of these travel programs frequently offer 20% to 30% bonuses for Flying Blue transfers. If you can stack a transfer bonus with a 25% Promo Reward discount, the award prices can be comically low. Outside of special offers, it’s still easy to find economy awards at reasonable prices.

The Achilles’ heel of this program is the high award fees, which have increased along with fuel prices and can be $400+ for a round-trip economy award. When cash prices are high, paying the fees could be worth it, but that won’t always be the case, especially for cheaper flights from the East Coast to Paris.

You can access Air France flights without the excessive award fees by booking through Japan Airlines JAL Mileage Bank. This can be a great deal, but Japan Airlines miles are much harder to accumulate. The only notable travel programs that partner with Japan Airlines are Bilt Rewards (1:1) and Capital One miles (4:3). It can also be more difficult to find the flights you want, as airlines often open fewer award seats for partner bookings.

Aeroplan divides the globe into four zones and has distance-based award charts for travel within and between these zones. You can review Aeroplan’s award chart here. Award prices are dynamic for certain partner bookings, and the award chart for North America to Europe lists the lowest (starting) price point and the median price.

The cost to fly one-way from North America to Paris (for flights up to 6,000 miles) is:

• Economy: Starting at 35,000 to 40,000 points
• Business class: Starting at 60,000 to 70,000 points

Why is Aeroplan a great program for getting to France?

Air Canada is part of the Star Alliance network, which is the largest airline alliance and provides access to awards with many European airlines. On top of favorable award prices, Aeroplan also has reasonable award fees and several useful features.

You can add a stopover to any one-way flight for only 5,000 additional points. That means, if you have the time, you could stop over in Spain or Portugal on your way to France, or continue your trip beyond France to another destination. Just keep in mind that the award price could change if a stopover bumps the distance of your flight into the next price band.

Families with young children will appreciate Aeroplan’s generous lap infant policy. It only costs CAD$25 or 2,500 points to add a lap infant (under two years old) to an award flight. This is one of the best options for international lap infant awards.

Atmos Rewards is the loyalty program for Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines. It operates a distance-based partner award chart with dynamic prices. You can peruse Atmos partner award prices here.

The cost to fly one-way from the U.S. to Paris (for flights of 1,501 to 7,000 miles) is as follows:

• Economy: Starting at 22,500 to 35,00 points each way
• Premium economy: Starting at 30,000 to 45,000 points each way
• Business class: Starting at 45,000 to 70,000 points each way

Why is Atmos Rewards a great program for getting to France?

Atmos not only has great prices for flights to Paris, but it also has solid award availability. I didn’t search the entire calendar, but I looked at several routes from cities like Seattle, Los Angeles and New York to Paris this fall and found plenty of economy flights at the lowest award tier. Business class flights were also available, although much less plentiful, which is common with most airline loyalty programs.

Atmos award fees are typically reasonable, as long as you’re not booking a British Airways flight with outrageous fees. One of my favorite features of the Atmos Rewards program is that you can book a stopover in each direction of a round-trip international flight or one stopover on a one-way flight at no additional cost. Each stopover can be up to 14 days long and typically must occur in a hub city for the airline you’re traveling with. For example, if you’re flying to Paris on Irish carrier Aer Lingus, you could stop over in Dublin.

Keep in mind, there are fewer opportunities to earn Atmos points. Several co-branded Atmos credit cards frequently feature strong welcome offers, but Bilt Rewards is the only notable travel program that transfers to Atmos.

There are lots of ways to earn travel rewards, but the most straightforward is to take advantage of a big limited-time credit card welcome bonus. With the best offers, you can earn 100,000+ points from a single offer.

Most major airlines partner with banks to issue co-branded credit cards. These cards offer a range of airline-specific perks and may offer a hefty intro bonus as well. If you frequently fly with one airline, having a co-branded card can be quite valuable. However, if you want to keep your options open, earning flexible travel rewards is the way to go.

Any of these rewards programs would provide you with multiple options for flying to France on points:

The top travel rewards programs give you the option to cherry-pick the best deals. For example, Bilt Rewards partners with well over 20 airlines and hotels, including all of the frequent flyer programs I’ve discussed in this guide and many more useful partners.

Bilt is an excellent program for earning rewards on housing payments and frequently offers incredible transfer bonuses through its monthly Rent Day promotion. However, its Bilt Palladium Card (see rates and fees) is the only card with a Bilt Points welcome bonus, and it’s a smaller bonus compared to what you can earn with other premium credit cards.

The American Express Platinum Card® has a massive welcome offer that’s as high as 175,000 points after spending $12,000 in eligible purchases on your new card in your first six months of card membership.* You can transfer Amex points to Aeroplan, Flying Blue and other programs that can be useful for flying to France.

This is one of the biggest welcome bonuses currently available, but not everyone will qualify for the full bonus. The Amex Platinum comes with an array of benefits that few other cards come close to matching, but it also has an $895 annual fee (see rates and fees).

*Apply and find out your welcome offer; Welcome offers vary, and you may not be ​eligible for an offer

If you want to rack up a ton of points but prefer to avoid paying a $400+ annual fee, the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card (see rates and fees) is worth a look. It currently has a 100,000-point bonus, which you earn after spending $5,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening. You can transfer Chase points to Aeroplan, Flying Blue and 12 other airline and hotel programs.

The Sapphire Preferred packs a lot of punch for a $95 annual fee. It earns 3X points on gas and EV charging, dining, vacation homes, online groceries and select streaming services. You’ll also have access to a long list of travel insurance and shopping protections, including primary rental car coverage, trip delay reimbursement and emergency evacuation and transportation coverage.

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For rates and fees of the American Express Platinum Card®, click here.