Frequent travellers spend between €20 and €50 on mobile data per trip abroad. Do it six times a year and you're looking at up to €300 in connectivity spend — money that evaporates with zero return. Meanwhile, that same traveller is carefully tracking miles on every Air France or KLM flight, choosing partner hotels, and tapping a co-branded credit card at every checkout.

The gap is obvious once you see it. Data has always been a travel cost, not a travel reward. Until now.

According to the GSMA, 51% of eSIM users first adopted the technology specifically for travel. That means millions of trips, millions of euros in data spend, and until Kolet came along, zero miles flowing back to loyalty accounts. The global travel eSIM market is projected to reach $1.75 billion in 2026 — a massive category where loyalty integration has been, frankly, absent.

Kolet fixed that. As a French eSIM startup founded in Paris in January 2024, and the only major travel eSIM with B Corp certification, Kolet built the Flying Blue partnership directly into the product. Not as an afterthought. As a core feature.

The mechanic is straightforward. When you buy a Kolet Unlimited plan, you earn 10 Flying Blue miles for every euro spent. Miles are credited to your Flying Blue account automatically after purchase — no coupon codes, no manual claims, no waiting on a customer service email.

Linking your account takes about thirty seconds at checkout. Enter your Flying Blue number, confirm your name matches, and the system handles the rest. Your miles post without you lifting a finger mid-trip.

The earning goes further than just miles on purchase. You can also pay for your Kolet plan with Flying Blue miles — useful if your account is loaded from a long-haul flight and you want to put those miles straight back to work. And the referral programme stacks on top: refer a friend to Kolet and you receive 250 Flying Blue miles. Your friend gets their first plan free. That's a clean win for both sides, with no airline miles left on the table.

To put it in context: a Flying Blue award redemption for a short-haul European flight typically starts around 8,000 to 12,000 miles. Ten trips at €20 per trip on Unlimited plans earns 2,000 miles from data alone — before your flights, before your hotels, before a single referral. It adds up faster than most people expect.

Here is the part that surprises most people. Only Unlimited plans earn Flying Blue miles. Fixed plans do not.

That is not a flaw in Fixed plans — it reflects a fundamentally different design. Fixed plans (available across 190+ countries, starting at €3.99 for 1 GB in Europe) run at full speed until the last megabyte, with no throttling and no fair-use cap. When the validity period ends, any unused data converts to Koins, Kolet's internal wallet credit, so nothing is wasted. Koins can then be used toward your next plan.

Unlimited plans work differently. You buy by the day rather than by the gigabyte. Full speed runs up to 5 GB per 24-hour window, then steps down to 1 Mbps until the window resets — enough for maps, messaging, and email without interruption. Kolet states this openly, in plain language, because most competitors apply similar caps without telling you. That transparency matters. And it is the Unlimited plan tier where Flying Blue miles live.

The simple rule: if you want miles, choose Unlimited. If you want the widest country coverage, zero-throttle data, or the flexibility to convert leftovers to Koins, go Fixed.

Flying Blue has an extensive partner network. You earn miles on Air France, KLM, and Transavia flights, on partner hotels, car rentals, and financial products. Most members already layer two or three of these together. Kolet slots into that stack as the connectivity line item that previously earned nothing.

Say you fly Amsterdam to Bangkok return with KLM. You earn miles on the ticket. You book a Flying Blue partner hotel and earn miles on the room. You activate a Kolet Unlimited plan for ten days in Thailand and earn miles on your data. Every euro across every category is now working. That is what a fully optimized Flying Blue trip looks like.

The compounding effect becomes meaningful over a full year of travel. Six international trips, each with a Kolet Unlimited plan averaging €25 in spend, generates 1,500 miles from data alone. Add two or three referrals at 250 miles each and you are approaching 2,250 miles — before a single flight segment. For a Flying Blue Ivory or Silver member building toward status or a specific award, that is not noise. That is a real contribution.

The practical setup takes under five minutes. Install the Kolet eSIM at home on Wi-Fi before your trip. Link your Flying Blue number at checkout. Fly. Activate at your destination when you need data — billing only starts at your first MB. Miles post automatically. Your original SIM stays in your phone, so your number stays active throughout.

Kolet works on iPhone XS and later, Samsung S20 and later, and most flagship Android devices from 2019 onward, provided the phone is carrier-unlocked. One eSIM covers 190+ countries on Fixed plans and 100+ countries on Unlimited plans — no swapping, no new QR codes per destination, just a different plan for each trip.

The best miles strategies are boring in the best way. They run quietly in the background, earning on spend you were going to make anyway. Connectivity is unavoidable when you travel. The only question is whether it earns you anything.

With Flying Blue and Kolet Unlimited, it does. Ten miles per euro, automatic crediting, a referral bonus that keeps giving, and the option to pay with miles when your account is flush. No roaming fees, no SIM card queues at the airport, no surprise bills. Just data that works, and miles that accumulate.

The next trip is the easiest place to start.