In August 2023, major changes were announced to Finnair Plus, whereby the program is adopting Avios as its rewards currency. There’s a major update, as the new program is now live.
Continue reading: Finnair Plus Adopts Avios As Rewards Currency
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Basically every frequent Finnair flyer is upset about these changes. Award flights with Finnair have increased about 50% in just 12 months, Platinum status will be impossible to earn as a no-corporate flyer and so on. And to add to that, Economy (Classic) tickets to the US will now earn about 2,000 instead of 13,000 Avios per round-trip.
It's odd how the rapid decline of Finnair Plus is referred to as "net positive".
It would be an interesting development if additional One World airlines adopt Avios.
@Lucky: does it seem to you that since several OW member airlines have adopted Avios, they no longer offer award seats to AA account holders?
I'm not an AY frequent flyer and I'm not even a member of its FF program, but I'm thinking about joining Finnair Plus now, because of its fixed award charts, unlike all of the other Avios airlines (and many of the OW airlines) which use distance-based award charts. Fixed awards naturally present redemption opportunities that distance-based awards (which are often useful only for shorter distance flights) don't.
How simple or complicated is AY's redemption process? Any issues to be aware of?
The redemption tables are not that favorable overall. Maybe some JAL flights might be reasonable if you don't have AA Miles. The two sweet spots I could find for North America are 75k North America to Asia on Cathay (but availability is basically non-existent right now with partners) or 50.5k to CMN on Royal Air Maroc (this is a little better then the rates on AA). Some of the rates from Europe are much more favorable overall.
Other than that, the rates for longer US domestic flights on AA and AS are competitive if you don't have points in those programs. Actually, most of the economy pricing is decent. But Business value is pretty spotty at best. It will be fun to go in and do some searches sometime this week just to confirm.
Second this. I see lots of QR space in biz on certain routes where AA doesn’t show availability and agents can’t see any of it. It’s a pretty frustrating change…
I took a look at its award chart and there're clearly some values. For example, for an award flight CTS-PVG in J, AY prices it at 24.5k Avios, while BA's price is nearly double that, AA's is 30k (and 35k using the current AS chart, but going up to 50k in its new chart).
Lucky, you forgot to mention that the Avios earning stays the same when it comes to codeshare or partner airlines. They don’t have the same tier point multiplier like flying through Finnair metal
Great I checked my Finnair account and it’s showing the avios. I’ll transfer to BA or QR and then aim for some qsuites. I bought a whole lot of Finnair miles in a great sale they ran last year. Hope they don’t take too long to enable the avios transfers.
The only award that would be of interest would be the AA first class for 30k.
AY J seem to be available a lot via AS.
Great I checked my Finnair account and it’s showing the avios. I’ll transfer to BA or QR and then aim for some qsuites. I bought a whole lot of Finnair miles in a great sale they ran last year. Hope they don’t take too long to enable the avios transfers.
The only award that would be of interest would be the AA first class for 30k.
AY J seem to be available a lot via AS.
I can’t get CTS-PVG to throw up any results on the AY website. How did you do that?