dave1013

From email just received

Frequent flyers earn miles/points as Finnair starts San Francisco-Helsinki service June 1

Alaska Airlines and Finnair are teaming up to give members of their frequent flyer programs the opportunity to earn miles/points on each other as Finnair expands its wings with new flights from San Francisco.

"We're thrilled to be partnering with European-favorite Finnair, as they launch their first West Coast service from our San Francisco hub to Helsinki on June 1," said Andrew Harrison, Alaska Airlines executive vice president and chief commercial officer. "Our Mileage Plan members will be able to fly Finnair to over 60 destinations in Europe from San Francisco, Chicago and New York's JFK."

Alaska Airlines recently announced a major expansion of its San Francisco service. Alaska, along with Virgin America, now has 83 daily departures from San Francisco to 35 destinations.

Members of Alaska Mileage Plan can begin earning miles on Finnair starting today. Award redemption will commence later this year. Finnair Plus members can begin earning and redeeming points on Alaska Airlines starting today.

"We are very excited to collaborate with Alaska Airlines on this new frequent flyer partnership," said Juha Jarvinen, chief commercial officer at Finnair. "Our customers travelling to and from the U.S. will greatly benefit from the extensive network both airlines have to offer."

Known for its modern, Nordic-themed service, Finnair connects 18 cities in Asia and seven cities in North America to over 60 destinations in Europe. Finnair operates Airbus A330-300 aircraft on its U.S. routes.

zebes

Awesome! Enjoyed my two trips in Y on Finnair last year. Will be interested to see if AS elites get access to the Finnair lounge in Helsinki, which is fantastic, and oh, it also has a sauna.

obnoxoid

Quite exciting for me as I have a Finnair trip booked. The mileage accrual chart is available here:

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mi...s/finnair.aspx

Quick notes:
The bulk of economy fares earn 50%--Y/B/H earn 100%, while A/W/G earn 25%.
Business-wise, J/C/D earn 100% with a 100% class of service bonus and 100% RDM bonus, and I is 100% with a 25% class of service bonus and 100% RDM bonus.

CDKing

This looks promising, I hope Asia is included in the award redemptions. Condor did nothing for the east coast AS members but Finnair sure helps.

beckoa

Finland reminds be of Alaska ^

Wasn't expecting this...

dayone

Other than San Francisco, Chicago and JFK, what are the other North America gateways?

zebes

Only other destination in North America is Miami. They used to fly to Toronto, but that looks to be terminated.

CDKing

Boston terminated too

PV_Premier

wow, didn't see this coming...

eponymous_coward

Yeah, a stopover in HEL on a USA-Asia redemption combined with a CX or JL award gives you a nice RTW. Mix and match with CX to Australia and JL to India and you could do a lot of premium class travel to a lot of the world for not many miles, assuming the AY pricing isn't ridiculous and there is availability.

Hartmann

I am really looking forward to this! I would much rather fly FinnAir over Condor to get to Europe.

notquiteaff

Too bad SFO-HEL is seasonal (June 1- Sept 28, I think) and only 3x per week.

eponymous_coward

Not sure about that though.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=Sea-sfo-hel-muc,sea-muc

Two extra stops, both backtracking to some extent, and probably close to a 24 hour day of flying? I am not sure lie-flat seats are with five-ten more hours of travel if there are $800ish nonstops in J one way during Seattle daytime hours. YMMV.

felicidad76

but we can fly from other gateways during other months

Jma12

I flew NGO-HEL-GOT on AY last year, and I was upgrade to their Comfort Plus base on my oneworld status. The flight was quite emptied and I enjoyed it, I am happy to see that AY and AS are teaming up.

I noticed that now AS is partnered with 7 oneworld airline. Too bad there are no reciprocate benefits right now besides AA and BA