Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

New Finnair economy and business sale to Asia (earns Avios and BA tier points)

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Finnair is a British Airways partner, courtesy of its membership of the oneworld airline alliance. This means that you will earn Avios and British Airways tier points on Finnair flights.

The new Finnair long-haul sale is therefore worth a look.

You can see full details here.

Some of the business deals look very attractive. Delhi is just £1,299 return, Bangkok is £1,399, Singapore is £1,699 and there are a few Chinese destinations from £1,199.

Economy tickets start from £439 to Chongqing.

You need to book by June 17th. You can depart from either Manchester or London to Helsinki and then onwards.

These are the dates where the sale prices are available for business class:

Bangkok, 2 July–10 December 2014
Beijing, 1 October–11 December 2014 and 14 January–31 March 2015
Chongqing, 2 July 2014 and 31 March 2015
Delhi, 17 June–17 December 2014 and 7 January–31 March 2015
Hanoi, 2 July–23 September 2014
Krabi, 10 December 2014–26 March 2015; flights to Krabi available from London only,
Singapore, 23 June–28 August 2014; travel permitted Monday–Thursday only
Xi’an, 2 July–24 October 2014

You also need to stay a Saturday night to get these fares. Full terms and conditions are on their offers page here.

Note that, unless Finnair has updated its IT recently, you cannot put in a British Airways Executive Club number at the time of booking – it needs to be added later via their ‘Manage My Booking’ function.

As I wrote recently, Finnair has now published the timetable for the introduction of fully flat beds in business class, so you may be able to combine these fares with the impressive looking new seat.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (41)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • JamesW says:

    IF it were a flat bed (but its not) on the AY service in J to DEL from AMS then I’d be all over that E999 deal (£810). Use a cheeky Avios RFS for 18,000 & £50 (or for such a short distance it’d be no problem to do a 9,000 avios redemption for economy).
    That’s a bargain.

    But sadly they are not flatbeds on the DEL route yet.

    Full-flat seats will be available in Business Class on the following intercontinental routes from Helsinki to:
    Tokyo and New York from 1 April 2014,
    Beijing and Seoul from 1 May 2014,
    Hanoi, Nagoya, Osaka and Shanghai from 1 June 2014,
    Hong Kong during the winter season.

    • PGW says:

      A flat bed would certainly be preferable but the flight leaves HEL around 8 pm and is barely 7 hours with the return on a day flight. The saving against competitors seems worth that for me.

    • Rob says:

      Those are the guaranteed routes … may or may not be on other routes but not 100 per cent.

  • Tim says:

    I am travelling AMS-HEL-BKK-HEL-AMS in business class (booking class I) Perhaps it’s just me but I’m still not sure how many BA avios + tiers this will get me. Of course the BA website shows Finnair business class = 125% of flown miles (which would be 11728 miles according to Great Circle mapper x 125% = 14660 avios) but then there is the tiers part which is not very clear. Does anyone have an idea?

    • Alan says:

      Hi Tim. I’d highly recommend using Owen Rudge’s excellent BA Avios and TP calculator – it’s unofficial, but normally pretty accurate and can handle multi-stop itineraries on multiple OW carriers along with working out tier and cabin bonus – http://www.owenrudge.net/utils/bacalc/. He’s only been a few tens of Avios out on my US airways trip and spot on for TPs!

      • Tim says:

        Thanks Alan, looks good, especially the amount of BA-tier points looks nice for a non-BA flight. We’ll see.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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