Flying Blue Petroleum – a good free scheme if you’re in the oil and energy sector

Last August, just a couple of weeks after I wrote about it again, Lufthansa announced the closure of its oilandenergyclub, presumably due to the slump in the oil market.  This offered special benefits to people who worked in the oil and energy sector including Silver (Frequent Traveller) status in the Miles & More programme.

Whilst the Lufthansa scheme may be dead, there is still one perk left if you work in the oil and gas sector.  The KLM / Air France programme, Flying Blue, has a similar scheme – Flying Blue Petroleum.

Full details can be found here on the KLM website.

The Flying Blue scheme does not give you status across the whole of SkyTeam. However, the benefits – for someone flying out of Paris or Amsterdam – are interesting.

The benefits could be handy. As well as dedicated check-in counters and priority boarding, you can access the KLM Crown lounge at Schiphol and the AIR FRANCE lounge at Paris-Charles de Gaulle.

As with the defunct Lufthansa scheme, membership is FREE if you work in the oil and gas sector so it is well worth a look.  You can join here.  Do forward a link to this article to any friends you have who work in oil, gas or energy.

How to earn Flying Blue miles from UK credit cards (December 2021)

Air France and KLM do not have a UK Flying Blue credit card.  However, you can earn Flying Blue miles by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These are:

• American Express Preferred Rewards Gold (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 20,000 Flying Blue miles. This card is FREE for your first year and also comes with two free airport lounge passes.

• The Platinum Card from American Express (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 30,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 30,000 Flying Blue miles

• American Express Rewards credit card (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 5,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 5,000 Flying Blue miles. This card is FREE for life.

Membership Rewards points convert at 1:1 into Flying Blue miles which is an attractive rate.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, which converts to 1 Flying Blue mile. The Gold card earns double points (2 per £1) on all flights you charge to it.