The Finnair Plus program has just launched its first promotion of 2021 on purchased points. While Finnair Plus is no doubt a niche program, the cost to purchase points is extremely reasonable, so it’s at least worth being aware of this offer.
In this post:
Buy Finnair Plus points with 40% discount
Finnair Plus is offering a promotion when you buy points by Wednesday, March 10, 2021. Finnair Plus is offering a tiered discount on purchased points, as follows:
- Buy 5,000-29,000 points, get a 10% discount
- Buy 30,000-59,000 points, get a 20% discount
- Buy 60,000-99,000 points, get a 30% discount
- Buy 100,000-200,000 points, get a 40% discount
Ordinarily Finnair charges as little as 1.2875 cents (in EUR) per purchased point. Through this promotion you could purchase a total of 200,000 points at a cost of 1,545 EUR (~1,860 USD), which is a rate of 0.93 cents (in USD) per point.
There are a few things to be aware of:
- You can purchase up to 200,000 points per Finnair Plus account per calendar year
- Points purchases are processed by points.com, so wouldn’t count as airfare for the purposes of credit card spending; therefore I’d recommend using a card on which you’re trying to reach minimum spending, or otherwise, a credit card that maximizes your return on everyday spending
- While this is a great price, in the past we’ve seen Finnair sell points for up to 50% off, so this isn’t quite the best offer we’ve seen from the program
Finnair is selling points with up to a 40% discount
Is buying Finnair Plus points worth it?
~0.93 cents per point is quite a low price, as we don’t see many other loyalty programs sell points at rates like that.
That being said, Finnair Plus is definitely more of a niche program, so while there are situations where you can get good value, that’s not the case across the board.
Finnair Plus points can be used for upgrades from economy to business class, which is arguably one of the better uses of the points, given the limited fare class restrictions. The cost of upgrades ranges from 7,500 points to 50,000 points one-way, depending on how far you’re flying.
If you’re in a situation where you have a paid economy ticket on Finnair, buying points in order to upgrade could be an exceptional value.
Upgrade Finnair flights starting at 7,500 points
If you want to outright redeem for an award ticket on Finnair, the Finnair Plus program has some steep award pricing. For example, a one-way long haul business class award costs 97,000 points.
That’s not terrible, but also not great. Then again, if you’re acquiring points as inexpensively as here, it’s actually pretty decent.
Redeem points for Finnair’s A350 business class
You can also redeem for partner airline flights, including on other oneworld airlines, though in general that’s not going to be a great value. Finnair has different award charts for different partners.
Just to give some examples, here’s the one-way award chart for travel on American Airlines:
Then here’s the one-way award chart for travel on Cathay Pacific:
If you ask me, there’s not a whole lot to get excited about here for partner award redemptions. 27,000 points for a domestic one-way economy award on American, or 180,000 points for a US to Asia one-way first class award on Cathay Pacific, aren’t exactly great deals.
In many cases you’d be better off buying miles through Alaska Mileage Plan or American AAdvantage at a discount.
Finnair Plus partner redemptions aren’t a great deal
Bottom line
Finnair Plus is selling points for up to 40% off, which is an opportunity to acquire Finnair Plus points for well under a penny each. There are definitely circumstances where this could represent a good deal, including for awards and upgrades for travel on Finnair.
However, I wouldn’t make a speculative purchase right now, both because we’ve seen lower costs on purchased points from Finnair in the past, and also because current travel restrictions complicate actually using those miles.
Does anyone plan on taking advantage of this promo on Finnair Plus points?
(Tip of the hat to YHBU)
I am thinking of it because there is a sweetspot for us who live in Scandinavia and that is Dubai. 100 000 points gives me two roundtrip tickets in Business class for approx. 772€ +charges and that is a very, very good price considering the flight time is > 6 hours from Helsinki. Too bad that they due to Covid, only seem to fly A321 instead of A350 which they did before.
*Sorry mistake, you are 5K Tier Points short of Sapphire status not Emerald status.
This is not such a great price, I'll pass
Last November they had a promotion where you could get 100% bonus miles + the maximum that one could receive was 300K points + You would get 75K Tier Points for free which gives you Sapphire Status and only 5K Tier Points short of Emerald status.