Finnair Plus - Switching BA EC -> AY+

I am a regular traveller between LHR<>HEL on both BA & AY. This worked fine, traveled on average 1 flight a month, also did some leisure travel with BA so every year I manged to maintain my BA Silver / OW Sapphire.

This I always knew was that my company had a <insert company name here> route deal, which offered flexability and the full 20 points. Now due to cost cutting the route deal is no longer an option and the lowest fare possible is booked with the (correct) logic that if a ticket needs to be cancelled or changed, a new ticket is still chepare than the old route deal.

The consequence of this is that these fares now only earn the 5 points/25% of miles. Terrible I know, but now AY offers points ine thsame lowest fare bracket which earns their miniumum of 50%.

So how many 'points' do you get for the LHR<>HEL flight ? And if anyone has an opinon, would a switch to AY+ from BA EC for status be the better option ?

Also is there a calulator that shows what points you earn on AY flights ?

Regards
LHR<>HEL Traveller

HEL-LHR is 1825 AY+ points in 100% economy and thus 913 points in 50% economy (and 3650 on J).

You'll need 40 000 points for a Y ticket in Europe meaning you'll get a free ticket after 22 low-economy return flights.

You'll get AY silver status with 60 000 points (OW Ruby) a year.

BA Silver is equivalent to OW Sapphire or AY Gold, and I believe the limit is 120 000 AY points, so you would not reach AY Gold with a weekly LHR-HEL-LHR flight. However, you would get lounge access with AY Silver, but only if flying AY.

913 points per leg. Full Y ticket will give 1826 points per leg, and CDIJ-ticket 3652 points per leg.

Travelling once a month using discount Y would result in 21912 points, not even half of what is required for A+ silver, OW ruby. Not worthwhile, I think. That would be good for upgrading two LHR-HEL legs.

Why not start thinking of BA EuroCheat?

913 points per leg. Full Y ticket will give 1826 points per leg, and CDIJ-ticket 3652 points per leg.

Travelling once a month using discount Y would result in 21912 points, not even half of what is required for A+ silver, OW ruby. Not worthwhile, I think. That would be good for upgrading two LHR-HEL legs.

Why not start thinking of BA EuroCheat?

Hi thanks both for the info (and Eurocheat of EC is becoming an intresting option) - Also intresting is how AY calculates it;s points i.e BA uses 1134 miles for AY's 1826 points for the LHR<>HEL.

Is there a formula involved i.e I also go on BA LHR<>JFK and LHR<>JNB on a ad hoc basis or does someone have the points info ?

Regards
J

In full-Y points are directly kilometres (great circle I think) flown. In discount economy ½ of the kilometres flown, in business 2 x the kilometres flown and in OW first (AY does not have first class) 3 x the kilometres flown. The latter two accruals are the strong point of AY+. Without longhauling, the sappire and emerald are quite hard to reach.

(And there are some exceptions as well: in Finland you earn either 500 points in discount economy and 1000 points in full economy - see the chart in the following long link:
http://www.finnair.fi/finnaircom/wps/portal/finnair/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Y_QjzKL9463MHYBSYGYLj76kW hCzp5oQi7xzt4IIV-P_NxU_aC0zHg3T31v_QD9gtzQ0IhyR0UAsq3TGA!!/delta/base64xml/L0lKWWttUSEhL3dITUFDc0FFVUFOby80SUVhREFBIS9lbl9GSQ !!?setlocale=en_FI#)

Finnair Plus is very clearly targeted at longhaul frequent flyers in biz class. The 100% earning economy booking classes are all fairly expensive, no good deals there like V class at Cathay MPC.

I think it can be said that Finnair Plus is the most difficult program within OW to achieve status. Even MPC at Cathay/Dragonair has lower requirements.

Is there a formula involved i.e I also go on BA LHR<>JFK and LHR<>JNB on a ad hoc basis or does someone have the points info ?


Like TTL explained above - it's all based on the great circle distance in kilometers, apart from some fixed mileages (domestic Finland, Scandinavia, Baltics, Germany, Netherland).

Simply punch your routing here, select kilometers as the unit and divide by 2 for el cheapo economy and you are very close to the actual result: http://gc.kls2.com/

Finnair Plus is very clearly targeted at longhaul frequent flyers in biz class. The 100% earning economy booking classes are all fairly expensive, no good deals there like V class at Cathay MPC.
I think it can be said that Finnair Plus is the most difficult program within OW to achieve status. Even MPC at Cathay/Dragonair has lower requirements.

Remember that you can also qualify on (international) segments. Doing a couple of HEL-Europe roundtrips per week will easily get you a gold or even a platinum card.

Connect to BA, IB or MA and you are already looking at four segments per return trip.

Finnair Plus is very clearly targeted at longhaul frequent flyers in biz class. The 100% earning economy booking classes are all fairly expensive, no good deals there like V class at Cathay MPC.

I think it can be said that Finnair Plus is the most difficult program within OW to achieve status. Even MPC at Cathay/Dragonair has lower requirements.

I'd like to know which FF program out there is targeting people who fly short hauls on el cheapo coach tickets once a month? ;)

Remember that you can also qualify on (international) segments. Doing a couple of HEL-Europe roundtrips per week will easily get you a gold or even a platinum card.

Connect to BA, IB or MA and you are already looking at four segments per return trip.

Oh, my flying patterns do earn status on F+, that was not the issue. ;)

It's rather the removal of AY booking class L from the 100% mileage bracket that bugs me. The current lowest full mileage earning Y class, T, is easily 300 -500 euros more expensive than what for example a CX flight in booking class V/MPC mileage combo gives me.

I'd like to know which FF program out there is targeting people who fly short hauls on el cheapo coach tickets once a month? ;)

I think most of them are... Just the benefits are slightly marginal by doing just that. When counting the segments, I really do not understand, why the domestic segments do not qualify (@ € 500-600 return in Y)? Collecting those segmets to BA is much more fun, e.g. KUO-HEL-LHR return in Y+CDIJR will result in 120 TP:s and also plain KUO-HEL returns 40 TP:s each. No big deal to collect 800 TP:s per year to get or keep an emerald card. And it is just about one long-haul HEL-LHR-XXX in business resulting in 320 TP:s to get the sapphire (400 TP:s needed). Besides, the spouse has discovered this too, thus there are two golds in the family... four people to the lounge if we are travelling together.

I'd like to know which FF program out there is targeting people who fly short hauls on el cheapo coach tickets once a month? ;)

It is called AAdvantage. Miles never expire, and you earn 100% miles on "el cheapo" fares with AY. Besides, if you fly a couple of flights a year with AA itself, the pattern you described will easily earn you status and thus even more miles as there is a bonus on AY flights for status members.

It is called AAdvantage. Miles never expire, and you earn 100% miles on "el cheapo" fares with AY. Besides, if you fly a couple of flights a year with AA itself, the pattern you described will easily earn you status and thus even more miles as there is a bonus on AY flights for status members.

Yeah, to some extent that's correct....but I made my comment about a program being "targeted"...you might reach AAGold with once a month intra-Europe Y flight + some AA trips thrown in but what do you really do with it anyway, especially if most flights are non-AA in Europe..?