Has Finnair lost the plot with its new ‘Business Light’ tickets?

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• ChrisW says:

  26 Jun26 June 07:37

  There seems to be two main reasons airlines are moving to unbundling business:
  – encourage people to buy more expensive fares by warning them they are missing out on perks by buying the cheapest fare
  – acquire new corporate travellers by offering lower fares (because they’ve stripped out benefits) to companies who couldn’t care less if their employees have things like seat selection or not.

  I don’t like it at all – a big part of the business class experience is the priority everything.

  • Tom says:

    26 Jun26 June 09:49

    Would an average corporate travel policy allow for paying standalone fees for seat selection or lounge access? I.e. booking the cheapest fare available, but then paying to add on things that are plausibly important/essential? You would think that something like meals should be allowable, if that were unbundled too, so just a question of where the line is.

    • John says:

      26 Jun26 June 10:04

      I think my company allows us to expense seat selection if it’s not included in the travel class booked by the system.

      We also have deals with certain airlines – for example, with BA I can access seat selection for free in business, even if I don’t have the required status.

    • Sam G says:

      26 Jun26 June 16:43

      Mine would allow it. But this particular fare could easily be avoided in the system we use by saying you need to check in a bag, it isn’t sophisticated enough to figure out basic+bag fee.

      Then again we wouldn’t be booking an indirect longhaul or a short haul flight in J, so unlikely we’d need to worry about it!

      • Dev says:

        26 Jun26 June 20:54

        My lot would relish this … but because of the savings but because the policy makers are the lot that never get to travel and we are all piss takers in their eyes and jealousy clouds their judgement!

        There are ways around this … I never travel HBO on company business! I’m not in a rush nor do I want to drag stuff transiting giant hub airports!

        • Dev says:

          26 Jun26 June 20:55

          *not because of the savings!

• John says:

  26 Jun26 June 07:50

  This could be a good idea in theory but it depends on the prices. Perhaps they want to trial it and see how well it sells compared to the other fares / what passengers add back and what they are willing to pay.

  Also very important would be whether status gets you some / all of these benefits back. If it doesn’t then there is no point of status (depending on flying pattern)

  Remember this is about long-haul business class not short-haul.

  On shorter trips I can easily travel without checked baggage, I went to New Zealand for 1 night HBO, though the whole trip took a week, to avoid paying 20 Omani rials twice (since BA doesn’t check through separate tickets, and it was in the brief period where Oman removed the 5 rial tourist visa).

  Since I now have kids I probably do need checked bags but when I was travelling with my wife only, we often had just one. So if we could save £40 or whatever by removing checked baggage from one of the tickets that would be nice.

  Priority boarding and lounge access – there are all these HFP articles about dragonpass and aspire and whatever, which I usually ignore since I have no interest in them, but they seem to be popular with other readers, so doesn’t seem to be a problem if the airline removes it?

  As mentioned above I don’t understand why anyone wants to board early although having no lounge access may be a good reason. It’s not like you can make the bed flat and go to sleep straight away, you still have to wait for everyone to board and then do all the safety stuff.

  Fast track security (and sometimes immigration) seems to be becoming an airport paid service nowadays. Also even before covid outside of holiday periods slow track was not much slower than fast track, and currently when nobody is flying much it is pretty speedy everywhere.

  Seat selection, I’m surprised at the number of people who gladly pay BA £100+ to select seats, Finnair probably wants to cash in on these people too.

  • Red Flyer says:

    26 Jun26 June 07:58

    Not much fun though if you are hand baggage only and board last to find that the only space for it is above seat 55C!

    • BJ says:

      26 Jun26 June 08:42

      Should not be an issue in business class though ybag might still have to go a bit away from seat.

  • Memesweeper says:

    26 Jun26 June 09:32

    “ Since I now have kids I probably do need checked bags”

    nope – you’re not using their allowance properly … even multi week long haul my family are HBO. Not because we don’t have the allowance, but because the whole trip is just a ton easier without lots of big bags. We don’t tend to stay in one place so this is a consideration when travelling abroad, not just in the airports.

    • Babyg says:

      26 Jun26 June 11:55

      i wish my wife subscribed to this… but with a large suitcase just for liquids, shoes and other lady/child related things we are stuffed (and have been stuffed waiting for said baggage).. i miss the HBO days..

      • Lady London says:

        26 Jun26 June 16:04

        I think I’m your wife’s sister. There is no point travelling without luggage. It’s essential.

  • Bagoly says:

    26 Jun26 June 13:14

    They are applying this to short-haul too.

• Phillip says:

  26 Jun26 June 07:53

  I wonder if this is either aimed at leisure travellers with airlines assuming corporate travel will take a little longer to return post covid, or the usual “trick” of showing up as the cheapest option on online aggregate sites!

  • Bagoly says:

    26 Jun26 June 13:32

    It would be interesting to get confirmation from somebody who works in airline marketing, but I expect it is almost entirely driven by being cheapest to the algorithm (perhaps £10 less than previous, not £120).
    What is perhaps more depressing is that given the systems, processes and people they are facing on the buying/intermediary side, that is probably sales-maximising behaviour.
    While the “agency problem” (people doing the buying being different from people doing the consuming) sometimes results in overpaying, in this case it tends to lead to under-quality.

• Dubious says:

  26 Jun26 June 08:17

  One challenge with this approach is that it can generate a sense of loss aversion. I wonder if they will use this to have future temporary promotions that give components of the classic fare’ for the price of lite’.

  If I were travelling on a ‘classic fare’ where a ‘lite fare’ had been an option, I would have a greater expectation of the value of the extra services and thus their delivery, i.e. my expectation of receiving priority check in/boarding etc is heightened and any loss would be more likely to result in a complaint. When services are always included regardless of the fare I am much more easy going about them.

• Robin says:

  26 Jun26 June 08:36

  Speaking as a travel consultant, I loved your article thankyou.
  Maybe signs of “push-back” ?!
  I hate this so-called “personalisation” of the travel experience rubbish!
  BA described unbundling as providing “customer choice”
  Unfortunately, many customers fall for this marketing-presentation
  Like a previous commentator who suggested “saving” £40 on baggage would be “nice”.
  Airlines exist to make money, to earn as much revenue as possible, so it’s not about “savings”, it’s ALWAYS about charging “extras”
  Even you fell for it when you suggested that it would be understandable to exclude seating. How much does it cost a airline to allow you to reserve your seat?
  I long for the good old days when you booked your flight and that was that instead of all this nickel-and-dime nonsense!

  • Dubious says:

    26 Jun26 June 08:52

    I particularly dislike Finnair’s attempt at selling ‘Lite’ by claiming it is ‘more sustainable’ because you have less baggage weight!

    • Dubious says:

      26 Jun26 June 08:53

      I find it very contemptuous.

    • Memesweeper says:

      26 Jun26 June 09:34

      It’s not more sustainable.

      It *is* less unsustainable.

      People should be encouraged to travel with fewer bags and less weight.

      • A says:

        26 Jun26 June 13:40

        Do I get a discount then, because I weigh 130lb as opposed to someone in the seat behind who weighs 220lb?

      • Yuff says:

        26 Jun26 June 15:58

        I wish my wife would take that view 😩

  • TimM says:

    26 Jun26 June 13:38

    Agreed.

    Being 6’4″, I long for the days when the check-in staff saved the exit row seats for tall people instead of the airline selling them to anyone prepared to pay at their time of booking.

    I also long for the days of package holidays when the tour operator issued two flight coupons and an accommodation voucher in a small booklet. Now I travel with around 30 sheets of A4 that I have to print myself from multiple sources and order as may be required for the trip only to find my boarding pass doesn’t scan, “Go back to check-in!”.

    I wish airports would re-bundle themselves. They appear to have forgotten their main purpose. It is not to capture people with money for as long as possible and send them on a maze of over-priced retail and fast-food outlets until they really have to leave. I am surprised an airport has not been created that does not have any flights.

• Fraser says:

  26 Jun26 June 08:58

  This may appeal to those with elite status if most of these “unbundled” elements are still on offer to them. But then the airline is just throwing away revenue!

  A colleague based in Helsinki made the mistake of flying Finnair in economy from Singapore and discovered the fare he’d booked didn’t include food, and since he’d not pre-booked a meal, had nothing to eat for the entire flight!

  Despite living in Helsinki he vowed there and then never to fly Finnair again. Be afraid, be very afraid, of these fares.

  • Alex Sm says:

    26 Jun26 June 15:19

    Isn’t it a statutory requirement to serve food on long-haul flights for all passengers? And I can’t believe they didn’t do any sell-onboard stuff for those like him

    • @mkcol says:

      26 Jun26 June 19:09

      No.

      There is a requirement to have drinking water available free of charge, which Norwegian fell foul of on the SIN (IIRC?) route.

• Doug M says:

  26 Jun26 June 09:20

  What I hate most is the complexity this introduces. Did I buy the wrong ticket, did I remember a or b. I almost always book with BA/AA because I know what I’m getting. Unbundling of anything is crap for this customer.

  • Bagoly says:

    26 Jun26 June 13:15

    +1
    “First Class” on US domestic not having lounge access tripped me up a few years ago.

• John says:

  26 Jun26 June 10:06

  Interesting piece, although I have a slight quibble with the idea that WeWork are “successful”! (As I recall, their bottom line hasn’t been the most healthy.)

  Still, that probably reinforces, rather than undermines, the overall point!

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