annielee

planning for next year travel with my sisters.. and im willing to pay business class outright but not my sisters :-(, what will be the possibility for them to get the offer to upgrade to biz ?? got promo now about Baht 60k from BKK to CPH return in biz class..

WilcoRoger

With 60kɃ promo you'd probably get it cheaper buying it than buying Y class and paying cash for upgrade - and hoping that their bid is accepted. 60kɃ is a very good price for C.

NoWindowSeat

Thanks, intuition, best description of the whole process I could find anywhere ^

We booked flights to SIN with a friend (who's not really a frequent flyer..) and he is suddenly very interested in upgrading to biz after I told him I burned my vouchers for the best possible value available on the network (albeit A350 but what can we do..)

Anyway, I tried to explain this bidding thing to him, something I have no first hand experience of..he got the hang of it soon and made what I think are quite reasonable (4*) bids for both legs..now he asks me is there any possibility of knowing the result earlier than the mentioned T-7 days..? I couldn't really tell but I asssume not as it wouldn't make much commercial sense would it..?

Thanks for any insight on the matter.

intuition

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure nothing is said before T-7. One reason is that Finnairs says "you can change your bid at any time".


I'm just going to add a data point of a recent flight, AY22 DEL-HEL. It might not have any bearing on a SIN flight, as the loads are much higher there, but it might shine some light on the process.

Approx 2 weeks out, there was 8 seats available in F (ie for the points/vouchers upgrade).
Then these seats were removed and bidding was allowed. Lowest possible bid was 198€.
I didn't bid and later the "Last minute offer" (ie the confirmed cash upgrades) opened. (I can't really remeber if it opened before T-7 or not).
The offer was now 298€.
It was said to be available until 8 hours before take off, but the offer disappeared earlier than that, approx 1 or 2 days ahead of takeoff.

In the end I was upgraded anyway. The two people ahead of me in the gate queue was also upgraded, so at least 3 pax got op-up, possibly even more.
The J cabin was far from full, I counted at least 8 seats vacant.

OH-LGG

Now bidding is on for EU flights also.

I checked my next PRG flights and the lowest offer, the one star offer, I can give is 50€/one way HEL-PRG and PRG-HEL.

ff_flyer

Do you mind to share the timewindow for these offers? I mean how early before your departure you noticed them.
I have a EU flight next week (4 days from now) and no bidding visible, but the standard 10K pts standard upgrade is available.

OH-LGG

My next PRG is on 10JAN17 and bid is closing on 03JAN17.
09JAN17 ARN-HEL, there is no bid.
Then next PRG is 11JAN17 and bid is closing 7d before departure as well:
and no bids ARN-HEL

ff_flyer

OK, I have three upcoming trips until mid-February and nothing for me besides the 10K points EU upgrades.
Not actually looking for an upgrade but just asking out of curiosity.

On the other hand they are happily offering me to bid for 2 longhaul upgrades with XXX Euros and to proof the capabilities of their IT and solid logic of AY+ I have already upgraded those flights with vouchers.

intuition

Howcome there is no bidding on LHR flights AY839 and AY996 on 14 JAN 2017?!?

Plenty of J open for sale and not so many Y seats available. Too many stingy platinums on waitlist I guess...

NoWindowSeat

Could be..vouchers and points have a balance sheet value as well, no idea how big, however..most likely very small but again in the the very worst case (for AY) it can be quite high in reality for a lost rev. seat.

Jainzar

I checked now a handful of travels and I don't see anything. Not that I would do it, but would like to see it out of curiosity.

And somehow this upgrade bidding a la AY seems to be a quite unexciting feature. Just compare the amount of posts here to the posts in SK's PG thread with the AY thread being over a year older.

And don't misunderstand me: I love AY's fixed points upgrades.

deissi

About EUR 30 million in Finnair's 2014 financials. EUR 32 million in 2013.

NoWindowSeat

Cool, thanks for sharing. Any idea how many miles that would include..guess that remains classified..?

OH-LGG

I made a poor bid, 50€ for PRG-HEL and now it's accepted.

15.000 points needed if paid 100% with points.

So, is 50€ more or less than European offer 8.000 points?

FossilFlyer

I'd say €50 is less than the 8000pts, but it depends how you value your points, I reckon around €10 for 1000. This partly based on the upgrade offers where cash price 69 = 7000 points etc... great news you got one on the lowball bid though, that's a very useful datapoint! Any idea how full your flight is?

I finally remembered to have a look for an upcoming booking (HEL-ZRH-HEL), and the bidding prices seem crazy! Considering you can currently use 8000 points (current promo), the bidding started at €50, €80 or less (if valuing 1000pts=€10 as AY often do) was one star likelihood of acceptance, 3.5 stars was around €240... Is this normal, or just this ZRH route? And how often have people had bids accepted underbidding the current points cost of an upgrade? I tried with €60 and €70 for fun/as a test, knowing I could use the 8000 points or most likely be offered €69 as a last minute offer anyway! Maybe I should have tried the OH-LGG €50 or go home method!

EDIT - it's usually €89/9000 points last minute to ZRH not €69, I wonder what happens with last minute offers when there is a promo on as it's currently cheaper to just pay the 8000 pts now unless my lowball bids are accepted!