motef

Thanks for the quick reply

Amex Travel have advised me that they cannot purchase AY fares as AY doesn't allow Amex to ticket

A look at the prices for HEL - KTT are interesting

One way HEL - KTT is AUD$459, return HEL-KTT-HEL is $479

I already have the return booked as part of a Qantas OneWorld Award.

NoWindowSeat

Don't want to start a new thread as this most likely has been answered somewhere earlier...as finnair.com is what it is, are there any good OTAs that you can book AY flights 360 days in advance? There are many with 330d limit but as Finnair takes bookings 360 days in advance I was wondering...

Thanks!

OH-LGG

AY ended most of the co-operation with OTAs. Only 2-3 OTAs selling AY right now.

ffay005

Which other traditional network carriers actively prevent OTAs from selling their flights?

NoWindowSeat

What do you mean by this? And which are those 2-3 who are left, in your books?

AFAIK know AY flights come up on almost any OTA engine I have ever tried?

ffay005

They used to, but apparently, it's different now. Just randomly went to Supersaver.fi and looked for flights HEL-BRU-HEL in April. No AY flights come up.

r2d2

When searching direct flights HEL - BRU - HEL on Skyscanner, only results from Finnair, ebookers and Kilroy come up. Finnair and ebookers have the same price, Kilroy is slightly pricier than them. When checking separately at Expedia.fi, they also seem to sell Finnair flights.

OH-LGG

Kilroy (crap)
Expedia=Ebookers
CWTKalevatravel

I asked from Supersaver why not selling AY tickets and their answer was that we do not co-operate with AY, for more info contact AY.

motef

Is there any partner I can transfer my Amex MR points to, to then get them in AY?

And how many points is HEL-KTT and HEL-KTT return?

intuition

HEL-KTT is 10k and 15k return.
If you have a Finnish or a Swedish MR account there are transfer options directly to Finnair. Transferring MR any other way than directly (ie MR -> Partner A -> Finnair plus) is going to be terrible in terms of how much points you'll lose in the transfer.

plain

Let's give this a try..

I don't currently have any frequent flyer status and I fly mostly economy Norwegian & EasyJet and sometimes also Finnair and Lufthansa between EU countries. I get maybe 6 to 12 legs a year on those trips. Price is the deciding factor on 1-4 hour flights.
Now I'm planning flying in business to North America and/or SE Asia 1-2 times per year for vacation. Finnair has some deals on some destinations I've been eyeing. Still it's possible to find several hundred euros cheaper business tickets from other airlines specially when flight time is slightly longer (w/stop over). I'm quite flexible on dates and destinations, so many places to see

So my question is is it worth to start collecting Finnair Plus points when I have up to 4 long haul (business) and maybe 6 short (eco) flights per year for coming years on Finnair (if I consolidate most of my flights)? Or should I just keep shopping the cheapest acceptable tickets from various airlines? I'm asking here because being Finnish and flying out from HEL I would hope to get some experiences from people who have been in same situation with similar options.

Post Scriptum

Well, combining ex-EU SH to your holiday would yield the 40k/trip, so with two trips you would get AY Gold. That would essentially benefit you in all your upcoming OW-economy trips throughout the year + with the upgrade vouchers you could fly in SH J quite easily for some longer trips.

In a sense, if flying LH strictly in J, FFP status plays a small role but for the few hundred euros extra on selecting AY LH (assuming not direct HEL-Destination flights) the gained benefits would be worth it. If you are only looking at ex-HEL J flights, you would not gain enough points for gold. But thenagain, if you are planning 2 trips a year, take another with AY and get Silver, then the other with cheapest option and at least for your OW SH flights, you would have priority security etc.

ffay005

Welcome to FT, Plain!

AY points no longer expire if you have at least some activity in your account. Therefore yes, you should apply for membership. Even if you only get a very small number of points, you can use those for inflight snacks or wifi. It's poor value, honestly, but on the other hand, it's essentially a free sandwich compared to no membership and no sandwich.

Whether you should concentrate your flights on AY/OW depends on preferences. What are you planning to do with your points? How much are the points worth to you? I mostly use mine for longhaul upgrades, and also book some European flights in economy. If you don't find value in upgrading to J, then the points are of limited usefulness.

With Star Alliance, I've come to realise that the cheapest tickets usually accrue no points at all whereas with AY, even the cheapest tickets will accrue 25 %. On the other hand, once you've decided how much the points are worth to you, you could consider buying Value tickets. For a longhaul return, it's usually about 50 euros more, and you'll get 100 % points instead of the usual 50 %.

In business class, you'll earn 200 % even for cheap campaign tickets, which means 32 000 points for a return, and once you're Silver, it's 10 % more. This means that one longhaul return in J will earn you enough points for a European Y award (30k).

plain

Thanks for the comments. I realize the "it depends"

I like the idea of using points to upgrade on long haul flights, not so much for those shorter 1-4 hour ones. Also good point on the Value vs cheapest, gotta keep that in mind.
I think I'll support the local team and see how it works out. I'm not going to plan and commit on getting XX miles/kms but I'll keep my eyes open for possible mileage runs if things get interesting.

I have a bad feeling about this forum though, might be spending some time around here...

BlueNordicSky

YMMV indeed, but since I find it hard to spend AY points in general, using them on short haul upgrade to J is worth it for me. If your flight is longer than 2 hours then using 10k to upgrade is very much worth it for me - just check the short haul J food thread.