lkrt

If upgraded with points, the shorthaul feeder will also be upgraded free of charge. You earn points according to original booking class.

FossilFlyer

While this topic is topical again, does the Finnair plus junior 50% points discount apply only to award flights, or upgrades as well?

SPBanker

Only to awards.

FossilFlyer

Thanks for the answers, that's a shame! Will have to figure the most cost/point effective way of getting the family into J on long haul flights...

intuition

I had an interesting session with Finnair recently when redeeming for a one-way award. I guess I didn't follow my own advice being well-researched, so here goes my story!

Earlier this year SK cancelled their morning flight FRA-CPH, recommending the service by LH. Problem is, SK offers decently priced one-ways, LH doesn't. I decided to redeem miles on *A, and problem was solved. But then came a schedule change and the LH morning departure was suddenly a no-go.
I turned to redeeming AY+ points instead. Finnair.com was cranky as ever and refused to return any results for one-ways. Searching for return showed plenty of availability on date. I gave up.

Next day I decided to try my luck and call in (based on my findings the evening before):

(me) - Hi, I am searching for a oneway award, but the website refuses to book it. There are plenty of seats, I can see the seats if I search a return-ticket.
(op) - OK let me see. (Searches) That is because there are no seats available. I can put you on a waitlist and you will have our answer within 24 h
(me) - Eh... (confused by the zero availability and positively surprised by the promised 24h rule) ...OK that sounds good, do that.
(op) - Is it the 11:45 you are interested in? Taxes will be 49€.
(me) - Yes, please waitlist me.


18 hours later I had my award ticket. Pretty good (my only experience from waitlists are on upgrades and they do not have a response time guarantee).

But it got me curious, why did they say no seats? So I did a quick check afterwards and found plenty of seats on AB. So what I was offered was only the AY award in Y, which was 0 availability. There was no offer on partner flights, despite at least 3 AB flights having availability on date. Also, no J offer. I always assumed CS could do one search and see all availability in all classes on all operators. So when she said "no seats available" I took it literally.

So I've learned many things! First the 24h waitlist clearance (^) and then to always do proper research and spoon feed them.

WilcoRoger

The latter is a valuable lesson. Had to do it for redemptions "outside the box" or during ir-ops, no matter which airline

Ed Size

Again I need to burn miles - can t do any proper research on any of the given websites (always NO awards available) - even if I m max. flexible.

Search for either +/- 20 days US Westcoast between 1st of Aug - 15th of Sept., or EZE +/- 20 days beginning of 2018, Australia (also +/- 20 days) between 1st of Aug and May 2018. Or even BKK for a 10 day period from 25th of June onwards.

Called AY, they tell me to be more specific - when I become more specific they tell me that no awards available - just don t know how to proceed.

intuition

One tip is to break it down, and first only search the most important part of your journey. Doing so, I can easily find award seats on AY for HEL-BKK-HEL in J for june 25 return july 3, using QF award search.

When you are looking in a broad interval, QF page is one of the better as it shows a calendar with seats over 30 days. The problem is that it also shows Emirates seats, that is useless for the OW redeemer.

The other routes are trickier, as there are not one single segment which is more important than the rest. Did you try awardnexus?

Ed Size

Tried awardnexus with not much success, BKK is my plan b - so I wasn t checking so carefully there - as I would prefer using my points on upgrades on the BKK route.

QF for any reason is not really working for me - maybe because I don t have an active account there?

WilcoRoger

+1 for checking by segments. Though with AA, a simple HEL-TXL-LCY was "I see no availability" then I had to spoon feed both segments (actually with a full day/night in Berlin as an icing) and voilá, it was available.

/Rant on - AA. Really makes me wonder how these guys conduct business. Award booked online, payment taken from (FIN) CC. Need to change the dates, on the phone to the US, 12 bucks extra, OK, done. Many days go by, no ticket. ...? Calling again - it seems you have a foreign (=non-US) CC, we cannot accept it on phone bookings, except if you're an AA elite (...?)

Kind of impasse. Finally they came up with an idea of calling the Finnish number (that connects to who knows where) and they finally did accept a "foreign" CC.

/Rant off

intuition

Yes, you need a FF account, but it can hold zero points so you just need to register.

intuition

I know very little about the americas. But breaking it down, OW serves EZE from MAD,BCN and LHR. Assuming DE is departure, MAD/BCN seems best fit. BCN seems a dead end, no directs in Jan 18.

Using QF tool:
MAD-EZE has plenty J in jan, like on 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 january. Picking randomly jan 7 with return jan 23, choosing the shortest flights gets me this on IB:

intuition

Oh, by the way. On the QF tool you may need to check the little box called "Search classic flight awards". If not, the tool only allows searches from airports served by QF and QF codeshares @:-)

wkndtraveler

I have an award booking and I needed to change dates. First I tried to do that by myself on MMB and the website asked me to pay 50 euros per person for the change. I then called to platinum line and the change was done quickly without any extra charges...

jimaras08

Hi!

I have just started collecting Finnair Plus miles but I cannot figure out how to spend my miles the best. I tried figuring it out by myself, I read the thread here but I'm still not satisfied with my result.

Some comments are old but in my opinion still true. Considering the taxes you get the most out of your miles by flying with Finnair in Northern Europe or Europe (e.g. Dubai and Tel Aviv), but especially by upgrading.

Unfortunately I do not fly that often with Finnair. My homebase is in TXL and I usually fly with partner airlines and collect Finnair Plus miles. Using miles on partner airlines doesn't seem to be that good of a deal. Upgrading a flight is not possible on other partner airlines, but there is still the option to buy a complete business or first class award flight. But then again, the taxes and the amount of miles doesn't seem to be worth it. But that shows that (in my case) the best would be to first check the partner airlines and their low tax award flights. Do you have any other (new) ideas / suggestions?

Thanks!