manywhere

Somewhat related, more AY website upgrades on the way:


AY Plus upgrades on 25th

intuition

Yes, you are right. The way I read Wilco's post, the 18 months were going to be counted as starting from when oldest points were earned. Re-reading the post, and reading what AY has published it seems clear that it will be 18 months from last (ie newest) point activity.
So the policy will be - when plat no points expire, but as soon as a plat is downgraded, the 18-months since newest activity rule will kick in. With a grace period of 3 months, ie no points will expire until 3 month has passed since downgrade.

The old system (from the 00's) was that during plat time, expiration calculation was halted. Upon down-grading, expiration started to count from that day, ie points were protected for 3 years after losing plat.
Judging by posts on FT, this changed sometime (the 2009/10 revamp?) to be a freeze only on the actual expiration. The calculation proceeded so points were getting older even for a plat.

BTW, the 3 years expiration counted from down-grading day has been in effect on junior account until now. In junior rules, I am pretty sure I read something along the lines of "when you turn 18 your account will be converted to adult account. Points earned as junior will not expire until you turn 21".

intuition

By the way, you may be on to something there. Perhaps they are preparing for a future with more LT tier holders, whose points would never expire.

odo

+1

FFlash

I think it is no sense to guess what the new thresholds would be, since it all depends on the benefits they throw in. More sense would be to guess about benefits but that could be twosided coin, giving away our best perk ideas against our wish, just thinking...

Once again I hope they don't touch the program too much since IMO it is just fine now. Not too good to fear for devaluations and such, not too bad either to put aside the flaws and focus on the good. If they improve it too much from our perspective, the devaluation will follow soon. What I hate most is an unstable program where you need to run faster all the time to stay put.
Therefore I neither like the lower Plat thresholds introduced last time, neither any ideas of Lumos or whatever to give away plat cards. The bennies are watered down very fast then.

ffay005

Jainzar

The segment threshold was lowered for Platinum from 92 to 76.

intuition

I actually started writing a similar comment but never posted.

Last change in the program was aimed at making tiers more distinctive. Gold was made more important by removing lounges from silver, platinum was made more important by adding the gold giveaway.

Where would a super-plat fit into that? If they just put in on top and push the other tiers down, they have yeta again compressed the structure. That doesn't really make sense.

If they keep the other tiers as they are, then super plat needs to really be on top of plat. Today, they actually already have a structure on top of plat: the bonus level gifts. (200k, et.c)

As those levels are not published they do not entice people to fly more. A super plat level would make sense as it would be publicly known and thus entice some 150k flyers to fly more to reach a higher tier. If this is the place for the speculated super tier, it should be seen as something that replaces those gifts.

And that is where I end up at the same point as FFlash, where it is easier to speculate about perks rather than level.

I don't see any super perk worthy of a super tier (like concorde room) so I don't really see it as a new tier, just a plat with add-ons. So could such tier just add some gift-style perks? Maybe not the CD collection, hehe, but voucher based things/perks that will fit nicely into the benefits tab of the account page? Lounge passes for anyone? Wifi-vouchers? Joker-voucher (to release award/upgrade space) et..c.

reflektia

I agree with most of this. Current platinum gifts are pretty much a joke, especially at higher point levels. If someone is getting 500k+ tier points annually, gifts should be much more beefier.

Joker pretty much exists at the moment, if you call CS they very often release extra award space. I'd argue that it is even better, since it is not limited to once or twice annually.

Courmisch

Err well... they have made a lot of noise, to everyone. Thus, I expect that the changes will continue to affect all AY+ customers - including Basic.

I mean, sure, Basic customers now have the possibility to carry points on forever, and actually hypothetically upgrade to business class intercontinentally once a decade. Previously, it was impossible for them without buying points or spending a lot on a Finnair credit card - though I expect major availability issues from now on.

Furthermore, it is hard to see much announcements on the points spending side, as points can already buy pretty much anything from lounge access to food, not just awards and upgrades.

Still the way the marketing material is worded, there is more to come for everybody. It cannot be (only) Lumo; 99.9% of the customers base (including my 7+ years status holding self) does not care about Lumo because it is evidently utterly out of our reach.

Then again, they cannot give much away to Basic. So I can only think of enhanced fare structure, and possibly some new ways to spend points - FinnairHolidays being the obvious culprit.

Trav1970

If we look back a few years, the reason many airlines implemented points expiration policies was accounting rules. Due to regulation changes, all of a sudden the points balance on frequent flyer accounts became equivalent to a loan to the airline. Hence, metrics such as earnings per invested capital decreased as a result of this. Solution: Make the points expire so that the "loan" balance doesn't grow indefinitely. Of course the side effect was that the infrequent flyer lost the chances of ever accruing enough points to get something other than a chocolate bar from the web shop.

Making the change in the points expiration policy is actually good for the airline. This may encourage those infrequent flyers to "save" points for a free ticket to somewhere. Those are the people who wouldn't care for an upgrade: they are just happy to get on a trip. This must be much better for the airline than paying real money to a third party to send out Moomin towels and other fancy merchandice. Furthermore, this might actually incentivice those infrequent flyers to choose Finnair over some other airline for the annual vacation trip. As of today, with the points expiring, there is absolutely no reason for the infrequent flyer to even think about that. Unless, of course, they want a free Moomin towel.

So - will it be a major issue on availability - I doubt it. I am a frequent flyer and I hold a relatively large points balance. My relatives are typical infrequent flyers, and the points balances they have had would be in the range of 5.000 points or less. It's a long way to when these people actually start competing about long haul J upgrades.

intuition

I agree on all this, just like to add something to the equation.
As for the marketing aspects, you usually like to create an sense of urgeny. That is why you often see "10% off, only this week", because you have people who do like the offer but otherwise will postpone descision and forget about it.

In that perspective, expiring point balances actually has a point (!). If they never expire, there is one less reason to "top them up" in order to use them. So this is where the "18 months since activity" comes in.

The new expiry-policy is actually harsher in this context. Now you will lose all your points at a certain point in time, not just a chunk of them.

ffay005

I wish AY created a medium-haul AY+ category. Now we have Northern European flights at 1000 points (and a huge price variation), European flights at 2000 points (and a cheap roundtrip for less than €200) as well as longhauls at 8000 points (and a cheap roundtrip for €500).

Flights to Madeira, the Canaries and the Gulf (Dubai) are nowadays considered scheduled flights, but despite their 4000+ km distance, a flying time of ±6 hours and ticket prices that rarely fall much below €400, they fall into the shorthaul category.

I would say a medium haul category, with 4000 points, would be a fair improvement considering not only the distance but also the price we have to pay for those tickets.

This would, naturally, increase redemption rates as well. I just snagged a ticket to LPA for 39 000 points + €26 (would have cost €400), so it was good value. In spite of this, I still suggest a redemption rate of 60–70 000.

NoWindowSeat

Many very valid comments in this thread. However, it is good to remind ourselves that we, FT community, represent a tiny, tiny fraction of the total flying public..no need to over think or worry too much, they are not doing anything for us here

For me it is all very simple and would break this into few main points from airline's perspective:
-they are in the business of making more money to their shareholders
-they want to focus:
1. make AY a more desirable choice over DY/SK/KL/LH/etc to those people who fly little and can never earn status..it is a huge mass and revenue to be taken = "never" expiring points is targeted here
2. make AY more desirable choice to those few frequent long haul J flyers who have status everywhere anyway and are spending 2-5ke per round trip = Lumo

The general FT community is never ever targeted by any "improvement" or "enhancement" to any FF scheme = we are never happy and will just need to continue to work around "the system".

Just my 2 cents,

ffay005

Another true improvement would be to adopt the AA/BA oneway award principle, which would allow open jaws and even double open jaws.