Intriguing Finnair Promo To Buy Points & Status

The Finnair Plus program has just launched its latest promotion on purchased points. While Finnair sells points with some frequency, this is by far the best-ever offer we’ve seen, and it’s even an interesting opportunity to purchase top tier oneworld Emerald status, if you’re so inclined.

Buy Finnair Plus points with 100% bonus

Finnair Plus is offering a promotion when you buy points by Monday, November 16, 2020. Finnair Plus is offering a bonus on purchased points, with the bonus tiered based on how many you buy, as follows:

• Buy 5,000-49,000 points, get a 60% bonus
• Buy 50,000-99,000 points, get an 80% bonus
• Buy 100,000-150,000 points, get a 100% bonus

Ordinarily Finnair charges as little as 1.2875 cents (in EUR) per purchased point. Through this promotion you could purchase a total of 300,000 points at a cost of 1,931.25 EUR (~2,260 USD), which is a rate of 0.75 cents (in USD) per point.

There are a couple of important terms to be aware of:

• You can purchase up to 150,000 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

Finnair is selling points with up to a 100% bonus

Bonus: get 25% bonus Finnair Plus tier points

Not only is Finnair Plus offering a 100% bonus on purchased points, but you also earn tier points equivalent to 25% of the total transaction amount. That means if you purchased 300,000 points, you’d receive a total of 75,000 tier points.

For context:

• Finnair Silver (oneworld Ruby) requires 30,000 tier points
• Finnair Gold (oneworld Sapphire) requires 80,000 tier points
• Finnair Platinum (oneworld Emerald) requires 150,000 tier points

In other words, if you purchased 300,000 miles you’d get 75,000 tier points, which earns you Silver status, and gets you just short of Gold status. Keep in mind you could earn the remaining tier points on any oneworld airline, so even a domestic American Airlines flight could qualify towards Finnair status. Or there’s another way to earn more tier points…

Access Admirals Clubs with oneworld Sapphire status

Award points can be converted into tier points

Want to earn even higher status? Finnair lets you convert award points into tier points at a 3:1 ratio. This means that if you purchased a total of 300,000 miles for 2,260 USD:

• You’d earn 300,000 award points and 75,000 tier points
• If you wanted, you could convert 225,000 award points into tier points, which would get you 150,000 tier points
• That’s enough for oneworld Emerald status, and you’d still have 75,000 miles left over; oneworld Emerald status would get you access to oneworld first class lounges, not that many of them are open nowadays

Get first class lounge access with oneworld Emerald (though most lounges are closed)

Is buying Finnair Plus points worth it?

Let’s take the status offering out of the equation for a moment. Buying points for ~0.75 cents each is an incredibly low price, and you don’t see any other airline programs sell points at that cost.

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 not only offering a bonus on purchased points, but is also offering points towards status as part of the bundle.

Buying 300,000 points would get you very close to oneworld Sapphire status. You could redeem just 15,000 of those award points for tier points, and then you’d have Sapphire status.

There’s potentially even a pathway to oneworld Emerald status here, by using the 3:1 conversion opportunity.

Under normal circumstances I’d say this promotion is an incredible opportunity, though with travel restrictions and lounges closed, it’s hard to be quite as excited about this. There’s probably not much opportunity cost to Finnair giving away status like this for the next year.

Does anyone plan on taking advantage of this promo on Finnair Plus points?