Originally Posted by
killerdog
Going for gold on Finnair this year for the first time. Had a few questions about the upgrade process, and exactly how tier points work.
1. Do cash upgrades (PE -> biz fx) give avios/tier avios? (And more generally, what exactly counts as "travel extras". I assume luggage/choosing seat gives Avios? Does buying lounge access?)
2. I should be hitting silver after a flight i take at the start of august. If i book a flight for end of august now, will the tier avios I get awarded for it be calculated based on basic or silver? (6x vs 7x). IE, is it rewards rank at time of booking or time of flying that matters?
3. Similar to 2, if I pay for travel extras now for a later flight, will those expenses be awarded avios based on my current tier, or my tier at the time of the flight which they were booked for?
4. Regarding spending avios to upgrade to business, for long hall flights (fx helsinki -> tokyo) it seems like economy -> buisness is 40k avios, while PE -> business is 23k. Given that in many cases PE it seems like it is only slightly more expensive than Economy, it seems like if you plan to upgrade with points, it's always worth to book PE then upgrade, vs econ then upgrade. Is this correct or have i missed something?
5. For Avios upgrades to business, I have an econ flight to tokyo on ~23rd august, and when i look in the upgrade tool only upgrades to PE are available, and only using avios (17k). Nothing available to business. Do business flights get released later or something? Or is it already full/no upgrades available. Should i be rechecking to see if such upgrades become available? (And how often/when is best to recheck?)
6. For the same flight above, there was no option in the upgrade tool about cash upgrades, only using avios. But the finnair documentaiton seems to mention it also offering cash upgrades there. Are cash upgrades not available through this tool? Or not available yet?
I tried getting through to customer support to ask some of these, but the chatbot was useless and was in queue for chat support for >30m before i gave up T.T
Thanks in advance to anyone able to help <3
2. Time of flying matters.
4. If you can get PE tickets for that cheap, yes. It is worth it. However, on some routes PE can be twice as expensive as economy. It is also good to prepare for situation, where your upgrade doesn't go trough. If you don't get upgrade, are you comfortable sitting in economy for flight that long? If not, go for PE if you feel comfortable for that. If you don't feel comfortable travelling even in PE, only sure option is to book directly to business. That is the case especially as you don't have status or will have silver only.
5. More upgrades are released gradually before the flight. First upgrades are released 59 days prior departure, last upgrades only 37 hours before departure. If at that point there are pax on queue, those pax get the upgrades. Else those are shown as "free" and are given first-come first-served -basis. The earlier you enter the upgrade queue, the better change of upgrade you have. Status however allwayss trumps upgrade request time. In some routes upgrades are harder to get, and even platinum members might get those only 37 hours prior (HEL–SIN for example).