FlyingFinn

Arf, the Finnair web page isn't really set up for direct linking. But if you go to www.finnair.fi, select English from the drop down menu in the top of the page you should see a banner for "Comfort upgrade to Business Class" on the right hand side of the page, around half way down the page. Clicking this takes you to the correct page, then you can click on "Terms and Conditions" to see those.

Only until the end of August.

FlyingPrince22

I hope that this campaign of last year would make a comeback this year. My family and I enjoyed very much the 99€ upgrades during the summer months.

It cannot bring but profit to AY. There is not much sense in flying with empty J seats, as J pax are normally very few during the summer months.

Justinus

Same here! This was an excellent offer and I certainly hope that it will be back this summer.

Last summer it was between June 1 and August 31, so let's see what's going to happen within the next few days.

J being half-empty during the summer months, it would certainly be profitable to have some people moved from Y to J and thus get new seats for sale in Y, where the demand is usually high.

mkgrip

Not really, more likely selling cheap upgrades would mean less seats to sell in Y, they can move the curtain (or just take it away if J is empty), and J is 2+2 instead of 3+3.

Only way to efficiently use upgrades to free seats in Y would be to use last minute upgrades for the few odd seats they may or may not have free in J after positioning the curtain. And those situation are probably too rare to be really profitable, so I'd think they rather just upgrade high tier AY Minus members.

Justinus

Well, that does not apply to E70s and E90s that seem to been operating on many legs during this summer, including even HEL-GVA.

During summer months I have witnessed many situations where Y has been totally full, but up to 2-3 rows of J totally empty.

AY doesn't seem to want to take away the curtain.

mkgrip

If the see in time that a flight is becoming overbooked, they can just switch to a bigger plane, happens all the time. And if a route is constantly oversold, flying it with a E170 is just plain idiotic.

And even in the E-Jets, it's just a matter of matching the number so that the seats can be used in an optimal way. J may not take more room per say (because both are 2+2) but without the exact number of passengers you cannot know which class has the off empty seats that cannot be moved to the other class with the curtain.
If you want to optimize that, you have to do it last minute.
Did anybody get denied boarding?
Full is not a problem, it's optimal, but overbooked can be.
I have trouble believing that Finnair would rather deny some passengers boarding and pay the compensations (EU 261/2004) than just upgrade some lucky Y pax, if moving the curtain is not an option.

I've been myself on flights where there was lots of space in J and hardly any in Y, but that just a matter of giving the extra privacy for those who paid for it.

FlyingPrince22

The other side of the coin is that these kind of offers are a great opportunity for AY (or any airline) to advertise its J product for potential new customers.

As I almost always fly in J, in a fully booked flight I would prefer seeing in the front cabin rather those persons who actually paid for it -even the little extra- (or redeemed points) rather than just op ups.

I certainly hope that this offer will be soon back... but no sign so far.

NoWindowSeat

This offer was utilized very little last year, outside some eager FT'ers

For the general public it was not attractive enough so there was hardly any business case for AY in this.

If they repeat this promo it must mean that whY loads for the summer are lower than ever..which actually might be the case with AY as they are doing their best in driving paying pax to fly alternative carriers, myself among many others, it seems.

FlyingPrince22

We used it for family travel several times last year and it was just great. Our children are no small kids so they enjoyed J.

NoWindowSeat

For some "royal" people I can understand it but for an ordinary Finnish(European) working family 99eur per head per leg is something out of this world to pay extra...it's also a lot of money for most people who fly solo for business and could pay the extra to upgrade their company ticket..

FlyingPrince22

I disagree. Upgrading 5 persons for 495 € is just good business and good publicity for AY's J European J product.

Actually I am not "royal", but only noble... and this is no joke.

Justinus

Is that a fact or just a personal impression of yours? Last summer AY J had a bit more pax than usually when the J cabin is pretty empty.

NoWindowSeat

From a source within the company. Remember that you cannot judge this solely based on J loads, we were talking about the 99eur offer here, not the general load factor.

Justinus

Funny. Pax were obviously not willing to pay that €99 extra for the intra-European J class product, but AY now believes that they would be willing to pay more than €700 for the same (cf. the other thread).

It's a pity that that offer hasn't made a comeback. AY pratically never has any intra-European J offers. That offer was a nice exception to this strange rule...

nordic

The problem was that this deal did not give C class points like the paid upgrades offered by Swiss and British airways. With the current 25 % earnings and worse service in Y class the offer would be more tempting (not for everyone, I agree).

Even though the load would be 90 % there would still be 15 vacant seats in A320s or A321s. It is easy to get an upgrade by miles so AY must know what the load would probably be so it would be easy for them to calculate how many seats could be released.

P.S. about the current offerings in Y. I just do not understand why they offer better service in charter flights: you can buy champagne and preorder a proper warm meal.