OH-LGG

Again something unclear from AY.

I had 50.000 points upgrade AY756 BUD-HEL and AY95 HEL-BKK. AY89 to BKK is scheduled before AY95.

esledo

My case was that I had OSL-HEL-FRA, but there was one more OSL-HEL service in between before my HEL-FRA. Of course the policy can be different for l/h, but if it had been a direct transit OSL-HEL-FRA I could have upgraded that with 10000 points.

intuition

It might be a different thing.
What you are talking about is weather or not they'd consider OSL-FRA as one trip to fall under the tariff of 10k points. I am not so surprised that if there is a layover in HEL they are considering it as 2 trips requiring 2x 10k for upgrade.
(These tickets are very rare, they only have fares for a few select shorthaul O/D via HEL. Ie you cannot ticket a CPH-HEL-FRA on one ticket. AY won't sell it. )


The other case is weather or not a shorthaul is considered a part of the long trip to fall under the generous interpretation of how the 50k tariff works. These tickets are very common, and in fact AY is actively promoting layovers in HEL, from a few hours up to 5 days. I would be surprised if there was a requirement to be on the first connection for it to work.

Jainzar

Thank you for that hint. In my case I still needed to ask CS even though both segments were upgradeable to upgrade ARN - HEL. It seems like that the "complimentary" upgrade falls into a different bucket than the regular upgrade so they had to ask to get the required availability. It took a few minutes and they did the shift and ARN - HEL was also upgraded.
Be aware that northern Europe requires only 7,5k points to upgrade.

EDIT: Could it be that the legal connections where you get a complimentary upgrade can be found in the availibility check? I know that contradicts esledo but to me that would be still plausible.

intuition

Ah, indeed!

Perhaps.
A long time ago I did some checking of the tool and found out that there is some kind of married segment rule. If you search for the full trip you may not see space but if you search segment for segment there is space on both flights.
It was a long time ago so I am not sure if this is still valid but it is an angle to look into.

Jainzar

That was also my case. Each segment had enough upgrade availibility but not the married segments. But that can be "fixed" by CS.

intuition

Married segments is a technique to control availability/pricing on a city pair via a connection separately. ie to control A-C via B separately from A-B/B-C

With this technique they can offer a campaing fare on LHR-HKG, without discounting the local LHR-HEL traffic, despite both type of pax are on the same flight.

Using this technique on awards and upgrades is really silly in my eyes. If they did this consciously it means they are for example saying "we want to control so that members flying out of CPH can't access awards/upgrades to HKG that members flying out of OSL can". Controlling member perks based on departure airport is a slippery slope.

Jainzar

If you compare availibility of married segments above and the availibility for each segment you see that it differs. HEL - FRA at 7:50 the following day is wide open and the late flights ARN - HEL have all 4 free upgrades available but if you put them together you have 2-3 available upgrades.

And you can also notice that the 14:40 departure at ARN is not even mentioned in the married list.

FossilFlyer

OK, a very basic question - I’m getting very confused about ticket types, booking classes, the difference between these, and how to tell what points I’m going to get from a particular ticket. About half my tickets are booked through an agency, actually through American Express Global Business Travel via a secretary for the institution paying for the tickets. I can specify a particular AY flight, and that I need 1 piece of hold luggage for business equipment, but not what type of ticket, and they will be paying I think the cheapest they can get that for in economy class.

Anyway, the tickets have a flight class marked (usually N, O or R economy) and nothing else regarding the fare as far as I can see. At first I thought I was getting extra AY points as both N and O score 1000 tier & award points each way via the online calculator here:

https://www.finnair.com/gb/gb/finnai...ual-calculator


However, it looks like you can have the same flight class i.e. N, O, R, and depending on if it’s listed under ‘Value‘ or ‘Basic/Light‘ on the calculator, the points are 2000 or 1000 respectively.

I know I always try for Value tickets if buying myself as it gives me the hold luggage and 100% points, which is I guess the 2000, but how do I tell from a ticket with i.e. HEL-GEN in N outbound and O inbound what I’m going to be receiving? In this case it was 2000 outbound and only 1000 inbound... It also seems it was not as flexible as a typical Value ticket I would buy, and more expensive, so not really sure how the Agency was better than me buying and being refunded!

lkrt

If you have the e-ticket receipt, it should state the fare basis somewhere there. Usually it's something like NVA2FI (don't know if corporate tickets follow this form) where

• N is the fare class
• VA is the ticket type (VA for Value, PR for Pro, BA for Basic, LI for Light etc.)
• 2 is the indicator for the roundtrip fare
• FI is the country code

Jainzar

What I noticed is that AY can sometimes have tickets in lower booking classes available on their own site than it is available via an OTA. In that case AY is often cheaper than a cheap OTA. I don't know how that works but that is what I can see from time to time.

FossilFlyer

Thanks both. Seems I get the fare basis info on tickets I book from the AY website, thats very useful to know; but annoyingly not from the OTA, so basically don't know what I'm getting until after I've flown and points post, which is not very useful. And it does seem better fares are available straight from the AY website, so I'll have to look into how easy it is to buy myself and have refunded...

Courmisch

If you have the Amadeus PNR, you can usually order an electronic receipt by email from Finnair.com, which should show the fare basis.

You need to set your email address though; otherwise it might be sent to your TA.

ff_flyer

If/when you have the PNR just use My Flights which will show the fare basis, eticket number and a whole bunch of other details in your booking.
Very handy to track reservations and you can have an email notification when eg. airplane type and your seat reservation changes.
Has saved me many times.

http://www.myflightsapp.com/

EDIT: not sure if applies to corporate fares, but give it a try.

FossilFlyer

Thanks both, very useful to know. Next question is then how to get the Amadeus PNR for such a booking!