Alaska Airlines has added Helsinki-based Finnair as a new Mileage Plan partner. As happened when Alaska began their relationship with JAL, mileage accrual begins immediately, while mileage redemption won't start until later this year.
Continue reading: Alaska Airlines & Finnair Announce New Partnership
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
This is great news for accrual but redemption availability on Finnair is almost as mythical as AF/KL - lots of phantom space on AA, if even shown.
Is it just me or is Finnair's US-Hawaii redemption on AS priced kind of high for First Class? AS's
Hawaii flights all originate on the west coast and is on a 737 with recliners
AY earns kilometers, not miles. So, divide by 1.6. For economy, return, continental US/Canada 45,000 kms = 28,125 miles. Not a superb value, but not horrible either.
If the goal is FC US to/from Europe or Asia, (and not wanting to fly B/A) is there any use for Alaska miles anymore. Almost no availability on Emirates and 180K miles one way. AF/KL have "limited availability, Cathy is equally bad, at least for advance bookings.
So is JAL the only option left?
I would love to see this evolve into a more complete partnership, with Finnair making the SFO flight 7x/week and the two airlines feeding each other traffic on the west coast. As it is, the idea is nice but most Alaska flyers are well west of Chicago, New York and Miami.
Nope, not JAL either. Working back two weeks from the end of booking, there is daily J availability for LAV-NRT. But for FC? Nada.....
At least when checking on the BA website. Checking on the Alaska site, most of even that j availability doesn't show up. So I'm sure if its phantom, or Alaska just doesn't show it.
Sigh...
Yay! I'm calling Iberia or airberlin as the next AS oneworld partners.. but even Srilankan might be next at this rate.
I don't bank a ton to Alaska but I love Finnair. More options are always good. Plus HEL is one of my favorite airports ever.
Booked Finair (Business) using JAL miles award redemption, award space was though to found not non- existent. Following are some interesting AAdvantage redemptions available now. From milevalue and viewfromthewing, American Airlines has released a batch of Business Class award space to London (some totally lie-flat seats, some angled lie-flat) from many cities, January 2018 through the end of the calendar (April).
Hurry: Book Your American AAdvantage Awards to Europe, Brief Availability Floodgates Opened
http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2017/05/20/hurry-book-american-aadvantage-awards-europe-brief-availability-floodgates-opened/
For clarity, the lounge picture is from the Almost@Home lounge, which is not a Finnair lounge but still a decent PP-lounge in the non-schengen area of T2.
HEL is indeed a great airport.
Well, even if Finnair has space, getting from Seattle to NY or ORD would most likely involve a paid repositioning flight. I think AS allows only the lowest mileage fare bucket for these connecting flights. SFO would be my choice
Maybe they should hook up with Alitalia while they are at it