Finnair Plus loyalty scheme thread

[Felim Meade]

Hi, Just adding a thread to anyone who might be using Finnair one world loyalty? Ive booked 2 x 4 business class trips for the family for 2022. Using Finnair points i was able to book 4x business class Dublin, London , Vancover return in July ( mid summer) for 136000 points return per seat. There is on a code share BA – Finnair ( but its a BA flight ) which i think is great value. Ive also booked Caribbean for Easter with points too. There is really good value using Finnair on BA flights
Felim

• This topic was modified 54 years, 12 months ago by .

[rja]

Hi, does anybody have a UK customer service number for Finnair?

[ECR]

rja wrote:

Hi, does anybody have a UK customer service number for Finnair?

Not sure if it is still right as it is a number of years since I called it but I have 020 8001 0101 saved on my phone.

[Mikee]

Posted this over in Finnair Buy Points/Status article:

My mini-overview of the value I hope to get from this promotion (which I paid £2,195 for 400,000 points @ 0.55p/per point):

1 – I swapped 150k for Oneworld Emerald (BA Gold) for 2 years, which also gives me a Oneworld Sapphire (BA Silver) soft landing for another year, so status until 1st Jan 2025….and I have 250k points left for award bookings

2 – Over 3 years, I will receive 16 short-haul upgrade vouchers and 4 long-haul vouchers. I am able to exchange 4 SH vouchers for 1 LH so in effect, I will have 8 x LH vouchers (best use for me)

3 – I can upgrade from Y to J the cheapest Finnair cash tickets (hand baggage only) with my vouchers (or with 50k points long-haul)

4 – I will recieve 2 x 12 month Gold Status (BA Silver) vouchers to gift to another Finnair member (plenty of value here, particularly if you want to accept a cash “donation” for gifting!)

5 – I will have the ability to leverage Oneworld Emerald (BA Gold) status with other Frequent Flyer programmes which is much more valuable than trying to leverage Sapphire since not all programmes match to this “middle-tier”

5 – I do not have to chase status with BA for 3 years so can just focus on spending my vouchers/upgrading cheap cash tickets etc rather than tier point runs

What does this all mean for value? I will redeem points on Finnair and not partners, meaning I will save a lot on taxes. For example:

1-way MIA-HEL (or ARN) in J is 80k + £10 taxes. I can add a cheap 1-way HEL-LHR for less than £100 (80k points cost me £439 so total cost £550). Equivalent BA MIA-LHR is 75,000/62,500 + £550

With my remaining points (250k), I can fly 3 1-ways long-haul. The obvious inconvenience is having to route indirect to the UK via ARN/HEL and a smaller route network on Finnair compared to BA (…but Finnair allow baggage to be interlined on separate tickets if all flights are Finnair).

I just booked a 1-way MIA-HEL-LHR Y cash ticket for £413 and upgraded the LH sector to J using one of my 8 LH upgrade vouchers.

For me, the Finnair route network is sufficient and I don’t mind connecting via ARN or HEL. J-award availability looks pretty reasonable although one can never tell how good/bad it could be. As a top-tier Finnair member, I can easily book into Y and waitlist for upgrades. I still have BA Silver until Dec next year and have a pot of Avios to use outside the Finnair network (I can also credit my Finnair flights to BA if I want).

Finally, I get to use the sauna in the HEL Finnair Premium Lounge!

[Guernsey Globetrotter]

Good summary Mikee and it sets out pretty much my thought process when I pressed the button on it too 🙂

One additional point to note (if applicable) is that if you gift the Gold status awards to your partner, then player 2 also has an additional 4 short haul upgrade vouchers each year so that is an extra long haul upgrade in year 1 + 2. Particularly useful for a couple in year 2 as that will enable upgrading a LH round trip for 2 people!

As you say, it seems like a great deal provided the redemption availability remains OK and also as long as the introduction of Finnair’s premium economy in 2022 doesn’t mess with the value of the upgrade vouchers… It is probably worth making some provisional bookings as you have done to protect against this.

[Mikee]

Good spot @Guernsey Globetrotter….thx.

Another datapoint – Finnair website doesn’t allow you to book multi-city trips so you have to phone, which attracts a 50euro booking fee. However, if you ask to pay in USD, the fee is only $35. The very helpful Customer Service agent advised me of this but he couldn’t waive the whole fee even though the website’s lack of functionality forces you to call. A complaint in writing to the Platinum team might be worth a shot as it’s a pretty poor policy.

[Mikee]

Mikee wrote:

Posted this over in Finnair Buy Points/Status article:

I just booked a 1-way MIA-HEL-LHR Y cash ticket for £413 and upgraded the LH sector to J using one of my 8 LH upgrade vouchers.

Found a better option so cancelled this and re-booked MIA-JFK-HEL for Jan and then added a return in Nov HEL-JFK-MIA (not 100% sure I’ll use it but it’s minimal additional cost when you compare it to the one-way price I was paying). Found a good fare on Expedia USA for £461 (making sure the legs I wanted to upgrade were proper AY servides and not code-shares so I could use the upgrade vouchers). The domestic legs are AA on their domestic B777 so with Oneworld status giving free Main Cabin Extra, this means a proper Premium Economy seat on the 777. Emerald status also gets me access to the AA Flagship lounges including their 1st class dining areas. I upgraded the JFK-HEL lag online with a voucher…..3rd party bookings are not a problem in this respect and even appear automatically in your profile if you add the FF number to the initial booking. The only thing I’ve needed to add is a separate HEL-LHR which is <£100 and I can hopefully tags bags through to LHR…if not, I have plenty of connection time at HEL.

The booking process has been pretty smooth with no particularly long waits on the Gold/Platinum phone lines. All the advisors have been super helpful and booked my flights very efficiently. I also used the Whatsapp channel and responses were very quick.

[youneedtobeyourself]

Mikee,

What sort of timescale were you looking at for a confirmed upgrade? I’m thinking of booking and cancelling within 24 hours of booking if the upgrade isn’t confirmed.

Is this reasonable?

[Mikee]

Upgrade availability is shown by checking the Finnair website for award availability. If it’s there, you can upgrade. I saw J award availability and then booked a cash ticket on Expedia. The booking appeared in my profile and I was then able to upgrade online using my vouchers or miles. If there is no availability, you can waitlist via the website. I’m not sure how long it takes to get confirmed but I think you can waitlist 300+days ahead and confirmation is usually a few days before departure at the latest. I prefer to have firm J seats so probably won’t use the waitlist option unless it’s a last minute booking in Y and J doesn’t look too full. I don’t know how Finnair processes waitlist requests ie. do they fill the cabin with upgrades (like the US carriers) or do they restrict numbers to prevent to many people booking cheap Y fares and then hoping to get a cheap upgrade.