intuition

BTW the real FT way would be

Buy 4 el-cheapo tix for you and your beer-buddies
Change the buddies official address to your home address
Apply for AY+ cards for the buddies
Upgrade you own ticket with vouchers
Convince AY+ Service centre that these people are your family ("you are living an alternate lifestyle"), and use your plat status to upgrade them for 50k points


150 k points and 2 LH vouchers put to real good use!

Laajo

I like your imagination and practical creativity...

kauppias

This is what the finnair rep told me on the phone when I called to ask. I have not actually booked a AY- award so im going on their info

intuition

Aha, that's good! ^


Maybe taxes/fees are calculated in a different way on 2-for-1 than on a normal award flight. When dummy booking one classic award flight on the site, the taxes comes down to 280EUR:

kauppias

Intresting as the whole point of my call was to see if it was worthwhile to transfer points into ay- to use this 2_4_1 offer but if taxes are inseed 280€ it propably isNOT worth it...

So far my AY experience has fallen short

intuition

As I have never booked an award you should not take me for an authoritative source of info! And there seem to be something strange with the booking engine on the site. If I look at the fare breakdown for those 280 EUR, the taxes/fees are just 17EUR...


Strange, huh?
Best cause of action would be to get an exact quote from service-centre, then decide if you want to transfer your points. And finally do the booking from service centre!

OH-LGG

Really strange! There is something wrong again with AY IT-systems.

First of all term "taxes" is crap. There is no tax. 280€ includes passenger fee for VTBS and EFHK and 250€ for Finnair as fuel surcharge.

dera

I'm one of those people who've already accepted the "fuel surcharges" as part of "taxes and fees", but I'm also rather confident, that if anywould would challenge the airlines to any court in Europe, the airlines wouldn't stand a chance to defend their case.

JnsV

I just want to add a point of information regarding AY+ upgrade certificates. I have recently flown BUD-HEL-BKK, originally booked in O class and upgraded using points and a L/H u/g cert to F. I credited the segments to AA, because O class in the AAdvantage programme gives 100% miles. I feared that because the new booking class (F) was ineligible for mileage accural with AA, I could have issues with miles posting correctly. A bit to my surprise, miles posted automatically within 2 days reflecting the original class. Thumbs up to AY in this case for reporting the purchased class correctly to AA!

So it seems that if you plan to upgrade a flight on AY but want to credit to another FFP, you should not expect any problems with the miles posting.

FinOWE

I have 2pcs 2/28/13 expiring s/h AY+ upgrade certificates. Is it okay according to AY+ rules to give those away to one of you guys? If yes, I'm willing to do it as I'm not able to use those by myself this time.

intuition

According to the rules you can upgrade close relatives and people living in your household. So there is a limit on how you can give away upgrades. In practice though, AY may not question who is or is not your relative.

You do know that you can upgrade a trip that is far in the future, just as long as you request the upgrade before the vouchers expire?

FinOWE

Thanks for reminder intuition. I just don't have any s/h flights booked with AY metal right now...

SPBanker

I have upgraded colleagues several times with vouchers, nobody has ever said a peep.

NoWindowSeat

Same here..some 10 years ago it was much more strict but no questions anymore since 2005 or something..

FinOWE

Vouchers given for good so it worked! I hope I was able to make someone happy