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Finnair adds more new routes for 2022 – and you can use Avios for them

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Barely a month goes by at the moment without a new route announcement from Finnair, a British Airways partner in the oneworld alliance.

Last month we covered the start of services to Busan in South Korea, Tokyo Haneda and Sapporo.

It is also bulking up on the Heathrow to Helsinki route as well as building a new base in Stockholm to compete with SAS.

Finnair has just announced a new route from Helsinki to Seattle.

It will launch on 1st June. There will be three flights per week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Seattle will operate alongside Finnair’s existing routes from Helsinki to Dallas, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The airline has also announced that its flights from Stockholm to New York and Los Angeles will continue for the Summer 2022 season. From 1st May, Stockholm to New York will operate daily and Los Angeles will operate four times per week.

Finnair has recently cut the taxes and charges on redemption flights sharply as we showed in this article. Book a redemption in Business Class from Helsinki to Seoul on Avios, for example, and you only pay £30 in taxes and charges! The US routes are not as cheap, unfortunately, as Finnair’s hands are tied by the terms of its joint venture agreement with BA, Iberia and American Airlines.

Avios seats can be booked on ba.com in the usual way. Remember that you cannot use a British Airways American Express 2-4-1 voucher on Finnair, and that partner redemptions do not have off-peak pricing – all dates are peak dates.

The latest Finnair business class seat on the A350 is pictured below. We reviewed Finnair’s A350 business class seat and service here. We looked at how to earn Finnair Plus points from UK credit cards here.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

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

Get 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

30,000 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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on the ‘free for a year’ American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card is increased from 20,000 Membership Rewards points to 30,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (30,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 27th May 2025, the sign-up bonus on American Express Platinum is increased from 50,000 Membership Rewards points to a huge 80,000 points. Points convert 1:1 into Avios (80,000 Avios!) and many other programmes. Some people may see even higher personalised offers. Click here to apply.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large 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, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

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

50,000 points when you sign-up 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.

Category

Finnair and Finnair Plus

Comments (28)

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

  • Harry T says:
    8 Dec8 December 05:59

    What dates are the exSpain Dubai flights available? The link to LFC only takes me to a generic page that doesn’t mention the offer.

    • tony says:
      8 Dec8 December 06:54

      Google flights works well for this as there’s a calendar of prices returned

      Note it’s available from other Spanish cities, too. I just put in Malaga and it was £1005 for March 9-13

      And similar fares are available from many, many cities right across Europe. Lisbon for £1010, Paris (or Lyon if you want to pair with a skiing break) for £1064

      • Harry T says:
        8 Dec8 December 07:59

        Thanks. I’m actually travelling to and from Dubai at present on a similar fare from CDG. BA rather considerately also cancelled the LHR-CDG leg I was going to tragically miss.

    • Rob says:
      8 Dec8 December 07:45

      It’s not on the site yet, it was in their email blast.

    • Sarah says:
      8 Dec8 December 09:23

      Members get prior notice of some really good offers – book before January 17 and it is for dates up to the end of June.

    • TGLoyalty says:
      8 Dec8 December 11:03

      Google flights shows a low fare for exCDG but when it goes through to BA site its about 600 EUR more.

      Flying via CDG is actually easier for me than getting to LHR on train!

  • Polly says:
    8 Dec8 December 07:07

    Tony, that’s good info.
    Yes, this is a good deal, worth a look, even if we are put off flying for a while. Like the idea of the 2 centre trip.
    Like we were used to doing ex eu QR J sales Scandinavia to Asia. Gosh, in this current world of travel, did those trips even happen? Hard to believe just how easy it was then to just jump on a plane, no grief.

    Rob, will you be changing flights now to try this for one of your DBX trips? Or is time too short with hols?

  • NorthernLass says:
    8 Dec8 December 07:09

    Has BA re-started Valencia then? There was nothing at all showing the last few times I looked.

    • The Original Nick. says:
      8 Dec8 December 07:34

      I flew BA LHR – VLC in October.

      • NorthernLass says:
        8 Dec8 December 08:00

        There was no 2022 schedule when I looked but now seems to be 1 per day each from LHR and LGW.

        • Richie says:
          8 Dec8 December 12:18

          Btw S22 timetable has a Vueling operated flight with a BA flight number from LGW-VLC.

  • tony says:
    8 Dec8 December 08:05

    probably worth adding that LX seem to be offering sub £1k fares to DXB from London as well, so 1) it’s a bit cheaper 2) is 4 flights instead of 5 or 6 and 3) means you’re officially transiting a 3rd country rather than arriving & departing, incase that makes a difference for the evolving COVID restrictions.

    • Colin MacKinnon says:
      8 Dec8 December 09:37

      I book that. Lufthansa back to Edinburgh – so a great deal for Scots!

  • Bluekjp says:
    8 Dec8 December 08:15

    You can check bags in for the return and collect them if your ‘connection’ includes and overnight in London. But, there must be less than 24 hours between landing in LHR and departing to your final point in order to avoid a, usually, hefty stopover fee. The other way to have your bags appear on the baggage reclaim (in normal times) is to arrive LHR but book your connection from LGW. However, there aren’t European destination flights operating from that airport just yet, but that will soon change of course.

    • Asim says:
      8 Dec8 December 08:50

      The stopover fee for stopping for more than 24hrs is usually £100

      • tony says:
        8 Dec8 December 09:08

        And the bonus APD, which if you break the journey on the outbound leg will add around another 20% to the cost…

      • Rob says:
        8 Dec8 December 09:10

        … plus Air Passenger Duty, which triggers at that point.

        • Robert says:
          8 Dec8 December 09:19

          Thanks for this article and the tips, great way to do a double header break if Asia remains closed in Spring. Happy to arrive back in Madrid at 10:50am from Dubai then complete MAD-NCL later the same day.

    • NorthernLass says:
      8 Dec8 December 09:16

      VLC from LGW.

    • TGLoyalty says:
      8 Dec8 December 11:05

      Problem he is the cheap fares is the 2:30 departure and not many flights leave the next morning with 24hrs of the 6am landing.

      • Robert says:
        8 Dec8 December 13:21

        I’ve opted for 17:20 out of MAD that gets us on the 20:45 out of LHR which is the A350 service. Landing in Dubai at 07:45 is probably not great but hopefully dump luggage in hotel while waiting for room

        • TGLoyalty says:
          8 Dec8 December 16:10

          Comment above was in regards to the return.

          If you can do the connection with an overnight you can drop the last leg with HBO

          • Robert says:
            8 Dec8 December 17:11

            It is trickier to make it work as HBO, no way we can do HBO anyway for a dual trip so will stay in the air and rack up some extra TPs!

  • Mikee says:
    8 Dec8 December 13:21

    For those arriving at T5 and unable to use the BA Arrivals lounge due to COVID closure, I can thoroughly recommend Kanishka Kitchen on the departures level behind check-in.
    Just landed and had one of their bundle deals of a rice bowl with drink for £7.50. Excellent food quality, value and service. Good selection of vegetarian and meat dishes too.

  • Alan says:
    9 Dec9 December 01:17

    What a rubbish and unappealing offer from Accor – they really know how to make them the worst possible don’t they! 🤦

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