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Finnair will join Avios – what does it mean for you?

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In an unexpected move, Finnair has announced it will be adopting Avios as its loyalty currency from early 2024.

It joins British Airways, Qatar Airways, Iberia, Vueling and Aer Lingus in adopting the currency.

With ‘just’ 4 million members, Finnair Plus is a minnow compared to British Airways Executive Club and Qatar Airways Privilege Club, adding just 10% to the total member base. However, it brings new options to earn and redeem Avios on non-airline partners, as well as letting BA members use Avios to upgrade Finnair flights.

Finnair will join Avios - what does it mean for you?

Full details of the changes are on the Finnair website here.

Finnair Plus points will convert to Avios at 3:2

If you already have a few orphaned Finnair Plus points, they will be turned into Avios in ‘early 2024’ at a 3:2 ratio.

Off the top of our collective heads, we can’t think of any way of gaming this by moving points to Finnair Plus in advance. For example, whilst Finnair Plus is a 1:1 partner with American Express Membership Rewards, there is no value in moving points there only to see them devalued at 3:2 into Avios.

If anyone can think of an interesting one – perhaps a programme which offers conversions into Finnair Plus but which doesn’t allow Avios conversions – let us know.

The Finnair Plus redemption chart will also convert at 3:2

The Finnair Plus redemption chart is, in general, a Great Dane-sized dog. There are good reasons why, in 11 years of HfP, we have never suggested transferring (say) American Express points to Finnair for oneworld alliance flight redemptions instead of into British Airways Executive Club.

We need to see how the revalued chart looks after the 3:2 change, and also how the taxes and charges stack up.

Finnair can’t afford to be uncompetitive, otherwise its members will simply transfer points into British Airways Executive Club and redeem from there. Because of how these partnerships are accounted for, Finnair will not want this.

The way it works (as I understand it) is that Finnair will not pay IAG for the Avios it issues to its members as long as they are earned and redeemed within the Finnair ecosystem. If members transfer Avios to British Airways Executive Club to redeem, money changes hands.

For the same reason, it appears that ‘Combine My Avios’ will be restricted to moving to/from British Airways to ensure an income flow into IAG. Letting members move Avios directly from Finnair to Qatar Airways, or vice versa, wouldn’t generate any cash for IAG, although you will be able to do ‘Finnair to British Airways to Qatar Airways’ (or vice versa) if you wish.

‘Combine My Avios’ will apply to Finnair Plus

From the way the press release is worded, you will be able to move Avios in and out of Finnair Plus at will, for free, at 1:1.

What new opportunities will this give you as a British Airways Executive Club member?

When Qatar Airways Privilege Club adopted Avios, it opened up a huge new list of car rental, airline and hotel partners. You can now earn Avios via Hertz and Virgin Australia, for example.

This is what Finnair Plus will bring you (I have only listed non-BAEC partners):

  • Car hire – earn Avios via Hertz, Europcar, Sixt and Rentalcars.com
  • Hotels – earn Avios via GLO, Scandic, Sokos, Strawberry / Nordic Choice, Shangri-La
  • Hotels – spend Avios via GLO, Scandic, Sokos, Strawberry / Nordic Choice, IHG One Rewards, Clarion Hotels Finland
  • Airlines – there will be two new airline earn and spend partners: Braathens (13 routes within Sweden) and Juneyao Air, a Chinese carrier

There are also a lot of individual earn and spend deals with specific hotels in Finland, plus leisure options such as restaurant vouchers.

How does the IHG One Rewards deal work?

Yes, assuming that the partnership doesn’t go away, you will soon be able to transfer Avios into IHG One Rewards points.

Don’t get too excited.

The current exchange rate is 20,000 Finnair points = 10,000 IHG One Rewards points.

Given the 3:2 revaluation, this will become 13,333 Avios = 10,000 IHG One Rewards points.

As we value an IHG point at 0.4p, you would be getting 0.3p of value per Avios. Forget it.

Whilst I am also very interested in the Strawberry / Nordic Choice option, since this is the top luxury hotel group in Scandinavia, I suspect it will go away. Strawberry is merging its reward programmme with airline Norwegian and I can’t imagine Finnair Plus wlll want you transferring points into a competitor airline.

Finnair Plus moves to a spend-based programme

Whilst not hugely relevant to HfP readers, the Finnair Plus programme will move to a new revenue-based earning platform.

Whilst very little information has been released, the program will feature new milestone benefits to enable members to receive extra rewards, such as additional upgrade benefits, when reaching certain point limits within their existing tier.

As an extra incentive to join Finnair Plus, members will receive complimentary internet access for messaging (not browsing) as a new benefit on Finnair’s short-haul European flights.

Finnair is also moving to spend-based elite status. Whilst the details are not known, members have already been told that the number of annual flights they take will play no part in earning status going forward.

Finnair will guarantee between four and eight award seats

This is more useful to HfP readers. Finnair will guarantee a minimum number of award seats for Avios redemption on each flight. This should make it significantly easier to redeem Avios for Finnair flights.

Finnair is promising:

  • 4-6 award seats on shorthaul European flights (two in Business where it exists, four in Economy)
  • 8 award seats on long haul flights (two in Business, two in Premium Economy and four in Economy)
Finnair Schengen lounge

A new Schengen lounge is coming

In addition to the changes to Finnair Plus, Finnair is investing in a new Schengen lounge at Helsinki Airport.

This is less relevant to HfP readers, since anyone connecting to/from Helsinki via the UK to a long haul destination will remain within the non-Schengen area.

Rhys was impressed with the Schengen lounge when he visited in 2022, although it admittedly doesn’t match Finnair’s new style, which you can see onboard with the new no-recline business class seating and in their Platinum Lounge at Helsinki (review here).

Finnair has generally been moving away from high-gloss, white finishes in favour of warmer, more natural finishes and textures.

The new lounge will be larger than the existing Schengen lounge and will be located elsewhere in the terminal. This will allow the existing lounge to continue operating until the new lounge is ready to open sometime in 2024.

The new Schengen lounge will also have a dedicated area for top-tier members. Presumably, that means Finnair Plus Platinum members. It will, hopefully, cater to oneworld Emerald (BA Gold) passengers.

Conclusion

Whilst, strategically, a big announcement for IAG Loyalty, the impact for British Airways Executive Club members isn’t huge.

The key things to look out for are:

  • the ability to upgrade Finnair cash flights with Avios
  • guaranteed Avios availability on every Finnair flight
  • the ability to earn and spend Avios with additional car, flight, hotel and leisure partners

We will keep you updated as we get nearer to the launch date.

You can find out more on the Finnair website here.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

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

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

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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.

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Category

Finnair and Finnair Plus

Comments (103)

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

  • riku says:
    16 Aug16 August 10:22

    Currently redeeming BA Avios for AY flights means much higher fees and charges (there is no RFS for partner flights). But once Finnair plus also uses Avios you could transfer your points to your AY membership and then redeem on AY, paying less in fees. Also this opens up routes like HEL-EDI and HEL-MAN for Avios redemptions, because AY do not release seats on these flights to partner programs (the flights are operated by Norra and not by Finnair themselves).

    • meta says:
      16 Aug16 August 11:18

      The fees are the same if you book your long-haul from Helsinki and purchase a separate ticket to Helsinki.

    • BJ says:
      16 Aug16 August 14:49

      Am I understanding correctly that a Finnair Plus one-way J reward from EDI or MAN to Asia is currently 95,000 and will reduce to just over 63,000 following avios 3:2 adjustment provided that there are no changes to the AY region-based award chart? If so that might not matter much for London-based travellers who’ll mostly favour direct BA flights unless swayed by lower fees, but it would be a game-changer for EDI and MAN passengers. Sounds too good to be true.

      • Rob says:
        16 Aug16 August 14:56

        Yes, that’s the plan.

        • BJ says:
          16 Aug16 August 15:47

          Fab 🙂 so no point even to bother with stopovers or positioning flights in or to Helsinki. If it goes according to plan this means that buying avios means we can effectively buy flexible return fare to the Far East for roughly £1750, or one ways from there back to UK for as little as £750. Time to step up avios collecting again, and even to consider a subscription!

          • BJ says:
            16 Aug16 August 15:55

            Subscriptions are out, just looked at new pricing and no longer worth considering since they increased.

          • Axel says:
            16 Aug16 August 19:01

            Exciting stuff, need to look up Finnair SE Asia destinations and compare to Qatar taxes

  • DW says:
    16 Aug16 August 10:24

    Nordic Regional Airlines operate for Finnair and are whole owned by Finnair. There’s an annoying bug where you can’t book these flights via ba.com – so if one wants to go to HEL then onwards to TLL, it fails. I hope these changes will resolve this.

    • Skywalker says:
      16 Aug16 August 12:46

      I’m so glad you mentioned this – I was looking at this very HEL-TLL route this morning and I thought I was going crazy when the BA site kept giving error messages!

      • Rob says:
        16 Aug16 August 13:46

        You CAN book by ringing BA I believe.

        • Nick says:
          16 Aug16 August 23:02

          Correct. Franchise airlines cause weird operating airline discrepancies in Amadeus and can rarely be booked online, but can always be booked by phone. Norra, Qantaslink, Skywest, Nostrum are all affected… even Globalia in the days when S7 were in oneworld followed this pattern. A quick call will allow booking though.

  • Tim P says:
    16 Aug16 August 10:32

    I have nearly 200,000 Finnair points so combining them with Avios provides extra flexibility.

    Finnair reward availability though is poor. Guaranteed availability will be good so long as it is not swamped by BA Avios users.

    However, given the closure of Russian airspace extending journey times and competition from QR providing a better quality product, Finnair will not be the first choice to Asia. To North America, journey times will not be competitive to BA/AA/IB.

  • Patrick says:
    16 Aug16 August 10:34

    Revenue based tier status soon within the Avios group…

    • James C says:
      16 Aug16 August 19:24

      Not until after 31 Dec 24 atleast given they’ve just extended Double TPs on BA Holidays and given it’s premium leisure driving their bottom line in the absence of corporate J suspect this is a few years off atleast.

    • Jack says:
      17 Aug17 August 17:59

      will never happen revenue based earning is for avios and not for status which should be for those who fly often , that is who should be rewarded loyal customers. It will not and should not happen at all business travelers already enjoy the benefits those who earn status do despite not paying for it, status has rightly be earned by flying lots. Full planes is better than empty ones. Business travel is not coming back so it is much better to encourage lesuire travel and revenue based earning for status is not the way of doing that and is a dud. Very few airlines do it for the reason it does the opposite of getting people to fly with you especially with all the competition on routes BA have I cannot see it happening for that alone

  • memesweeper says:
    16 Aug16 August 10:40

    With BA moving to revenue pricing for Avios earning, there might be a window to credit to Finnair rather than BA for an enhanced return.

    Similarly, a UK based flyer could earn Avios through credit cards into their BA pot, but credit flying to Finnair, transferring as required to make redemptions. I’ve no idea if it’s easy to earn status with Finnair but it’s a more viable option now.

    • Rob says:
      16 Aug16 August 11:25

      Finnair is moving to revenue based tier status, although partner flights will credit differently.

      • memesweeper says:
        16 Aug16 August 12:17

        Number of TPs and Finnair flights (if any) required is going to be a key detail! the email says “ we will communicate these limits later this year.  ”

  • BJ says:
    16 Aug16 August 10:41

    Brilliant news in that it ends the BA Norra problem. Depending on the award chart it may spell the end of the need for middle of the night Doha nonsense on QR. However, regardless of these changes Alaska MP remains a better option to redeem many Finnair rewards provided nothing changes there.

  • Bagoly says:
    16 Aug16 August 10:42

    Conversion of Amex MR EUR ICC points is 1:1 to Finnair Plus, and 3:2 to BAEC, so no gain, no loss.
    I don’t know about the USD rates.

  • Will says:
    16 Aug16 August 10:43

    As someone who “bought” finnair platinum in covid and I’d left with 250k finnair points as a result, being able to turn them into 166k avios is a great result.

    • willmo says:
      16 Aug16 August 10:46

      I was just thinking – hang on I didn’t write this comment? Then I realised there is another HFP reader also called Will who bought Finnair Platinum 2 years ago…

      • Guernsey Globetrotter says:
        16 Aug16 August 12:40

        I wonder how many of us also took up this offer. I did and ended up getting a bank error in my favour so have 450k Finnair points as well as having enjoyed OW Emerald status for the last two years. Interesting also that I keep getting Finnair points randomly awarded for BA Avios redemption flights where I’ve used my Finnair membership number on bookings so as to get free seat selection etc.!

        • Mikee says:
          16 Aug16 August 15:14

          I also took up this offer back in late 2021 and have made the most of the Emerald status and upgrade vouchers/points as well as gifting Gold (Sapphire) for 2 years to a friend….was definitely worth the initial £2.3k outlay.
          So now I’m looking at the cost to maintain Platinum before the year ends…buying points/exchanging to tier points only gets me 75k so need to earn another 75k to repeat it all again!

          • Guernsey Globetrotter says:
            16 Aug16 August 18:53

            The thing is the original offer gave you 2 years of everything whereas hitting 150k TPs now only gets you one more year of OWE/Platinum at a cost of 225k points (the equivalent to 150k Avios) converted to TPs only gives 75k TPs and is the maximum you can buy. So you need to add whatever the cost of a tier point(s) run would be before year end to earn the other 75k. I hope I may be missing something but otherwise renewing this way doesn’t feel like anywhere near the value of the initial 2021 offer…

      • will says:
        16 Aug16 August 13:35

        That’s probably the most niche potential lounge meetup criteria possible there 🙂

        • Guernsey Globetrotter says:
          16 Aug16 August 17:27

          Haha – well there’s at least four of us! Not quite the HfP summer party but it’s a start 😉

          • Guernsey Globetrotter says:
            16 Aug16 August 17:54

            Wait! There’s also @mnlbay over on page 2 so we’re up to 5 now …

      • Mikee says:
        5 Sep5 September 23:21

        With the Finnair 100% bonu points purchase promo, does this now make it an option to buy and then exchange for TPs to renew/obtain Platinum?

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

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