bhomburg

I will continue to fly them going to Asia, especially with the A350s now coming in.
First, I had four flights with them now (mostly on the HEL-SIN route) operated by A340s where they sell the rear business class cabin as economy and put elites (yes, not only AY+ members but even oneworld status customers!) in those seats. You get economy service with the business seat, but I couldn't care less.
Second, op-ups happen more often than with other airlines. AY seems to (successfully - flights are full even in the dead of winter) cater to the low-end leisure market and apparently oversells/overbooks the Y cabin especially on the Thailand flights with recurring regularity. Result: status customers, even OW ones like me, get a free ride in J. No complaints.
Third - they started to monetize excess J capacity by selling cheap upgrades to J (EUR 350 one way on the routes I fly) online in advance. A typical discount economy 600 EUR ticket plus a 700 EUR upgrade would put me in a J seat for way less money than I'd have to shell out even for MH or the ME3 promo prices.

Last but not least, if I have to fly economy, their 'economy comfort' product offers the most legroom of any competing airline. Economy comfort is a new thing they just rolled out last month - the first few rows of Y on their longhaul flights feature 36 inches of pitch, fancy headrests, a basic amenity kit and semi-decent Sennheiser noise-cancelling headphones. I'd really recommend buying up to this for anyone without status - oneworld sapphire and emerald status holders get it for free, but the price is more than fair at just 60 Euros extra.

Staying on topic here:
Did anyone here take them up on these 350 Euro upgrade offers, and what was the effect on earning mileage in AAdvantage?
I have no idea if they reissue the ticket and what fare class these upgrades book into. Would be great if anyone could shed some light on this!

bhomburg

answering this after calling AY CS:
Tickets get reissued into business class fare bucket and earn according to class traveled in.
We'll see if that holds true.

Guy Betsy

How does one take advantage of the 350 euro upgrade offer?

How's the first row of their Economy Comfort I wonder?

bhomburg

I got emails with the offer right after the ticketing confirmation message ("upgrade yourself to business class"). Bought my flights at finnair.com, though. I have no idea how that works if you were using a travel agent or OTA.

I'll sit in the first row in a few days. Will report back.

bhomburg

Now, the legroom - there's definitely more than just enough of that. The space available there is HUGE. I do have long legs, and even when stretched out my feet do not touch the bulkhead. Carryon may be placed on the floor except for takeoff and landing (or when there's turbulence).





AY charges 60 Euros for those seats - definitely worth it should you have no status.
There's one caveat, though - which could potentially ruin your flight: As these are bassinet locations, pax with infants will be placed there should the rear bassinet locations be already full. Which was the case on my return flight - thankfully, the little ones in my vicinity were all very well behaved on this flight.
And AY has those 343 flying in several configurations which all vary slightly in layout and presumably available space. This shows tail number OH-LQA.

The crew protects empty seats in this section as well - one may self-upgrade to there only after paying the 60 Euro fee (can be done on board).

Bottom line: When flying Europe-Asia/AUS/NZ and I'm stuck in Y, this will stay the way to go for me even with reduced AA earning after the 'R' bucket gets reallocated to its proper place come tomorrow. At least I got to enjoy it while it lasted.

milehound

To all of you contemplating mileage runs to Russia on one of Finnair's cheap flights (assuming you already have the multiple-entry tourist visa): I was just informed that AA will not give me mileage credit for the JFK-HEL segment of my flight from New York to St Petersburg (although I received 100% base mileage credit/min 500 miles per segment for all other flight segments). AA said this was done after consulting with Finnair, even though both transatlantic segments were in the same fare class, as far as I can tell. I am reluctant to press the case any further, fearing they may remove the mileage credit for the rest of my itinerary as well. Has anyone else had this problem?

yminev

I have flown JFK to HEL on AY many times to various destinations, although never to Russia. Never had any mileage problems. Could you give us some more detail regarding booking, fare class, etc.

kauppias

What was the reason given for refusal?

I have had issues lately getting a asian ay segment credited to AA, but Im still hoping they will credit soon as the points will make me EXP

milehound

This was a flight from JFK to LED via HEL, for $653 ai in early September. All flights were in Q class. I received mileage credit for all segments except one within a week of travel. After waiting the required 30 days, I filed a request for mileage credit, and provided copies of the required supporting documents.

This morning I received the following reply: "We appreciate your recent request for mileage credit for your travel on one or more AAdvantage® airline participants. After reviewing your request, mileage credit for these flights has been denied by the airline"

milehound

No reason was given for the refusal. In any case, I just booked a mileage run on AA.com at <.03 per base mile, a same day turnaround on a Saturday that will provide just enough miles to maintain my status until 3/2017.

Xero

I noticed this: http://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/ea...title=partners

Does this mean if you have in itinerary such as JFK-HEL-DEL, that doesn't count? Is Russia classified as "Asia"?

It's unfortunate that we have to really read any sentence in the most restrictive way. If this is true, it would be nice to have a disclaimer that JFK-HEL-DEL on a single fare doesn't count.

MSPeconomist

Was the flight actually operated by Finnair versus some partner that isn't a oneworld member? I would assume that this is not the case, but we should ask.

milehound

It's entirely possible that Russia may be considered a " no-man's land" that is neither European nor Asian, as far as the OW/AA program is concerned. I've flown JFK-HEL on it's own with Finnair, and have also flown on Finnair from JFK to HKG (definitely Asia!) and TLL (definitely EU!) in the past without any issues. This is the first time I've had this problem.

nux

How were you 'informed' by AA about this, and did you contact them first?

AA considers Russia to be part of Europe, at least for award redemptions: http://www.americanairlines.co.uk/i1...tner-chart.jsp

I suspect you just had a misinformed agent.

jerry a. laska

Sometimes Finnair flights fail to credit properly and at times Finnair seems to deny credit incorrectly. Instead of starting from the assumption that some new limitation has been placed on earning aadvantage miles for Finnair flights, I would follow up with AAdvantage and point out the fare class and flights qualify for credit at 100% miles and .50 EQP. See also some of the posts in the relevant thread:
(here).