Courmisch

Well, these changes are very good for the infrequent business traveler, who can now hope to keep the balance building up, and probably earn at least 50% mileage on his/her few flights. Previously s/he had little incentive to fly Finnair.

As for the leisure-only traveler, the ealier change to expiration rules, and the soon to come family&friends pooling, means building up the balance is, or at least will appear, possible, even if slow.

But I always look suspiciously at awards, because of YQ/YR. Especially now that the oil prices are rising again.

Aviating

Good heads-up here. I had to act quickly now and was able to get a LH Junior J award for 100k.

seldomrfly

It is actually easy to collect points for a casual flyer. I got myself 100k+ last year, only flying on paid tickets a few times. Creditcards, hotels, promotions and all kind of stuff you can earn on make it easy if you only have some kind of "points collecting habit".

I also noticed that the Buying points section on the website is closed atm. It had been a decent deal buying points during the +50% promo a few weeks back. 15000 points to the Nordics is quite cheap in comparsion to the normal light tickets prices. (Especially when not HEL based).
Maybe it is time for me to step up my Amex recruiting campaign :-)
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Trav1970

This is definitely an “enhancement “. Most of my redemptions have been for jr members. +50% is very bad. Hopefully the J award prices will at least go down too. If not, I will evaluate which program will be best for me in the future.

WilcoRoger

For Jr members it's a mixed blessing - but Jr moving up the tiers, will collect upgrade vouchers, threshold awards, giveaway cards (looking at you, Sir Intuition) so on the balance the might even be better off.

Cheaper redemptions are welcome, though I'm still waiting for the new LH J rates. And still hoping for 50% rate for oneways.

The coming of family pooling is also OK.

I have to agree though, that these changes are more geared towards the 99%, but the 1% can also make use them

casper79

Personally, this is mixed news.

The Junior deal was extremely good, almost allowed me to collect more points at a higher pace I could burn them (YTD: 4 junior awards used, 6 more already booked).
On the other hand, 10 000 points is also not that much different.

Main question will be what long haul J will do. I am/was planning a trip with the Family and I expected it to do with 500 000 points (2x kids J, 1x adult J, 1x adult Y + upgrade). Now it might become 700 000 so alternatives will have to be investigated (e.g. buy one J for me, Y for the rest and upgrade at half price).

So some calculation is needed and perhaps it make sense to spread the flying more. Use Finnair to Asia to keep platinum and then get gold on some Star Alliance on US flights...

WilcoRoger

Good strategy, if you can pull it off. Check your options, which *A FFP suits you best, there are BIG differences. (my personal fav is TK, with its 2 years status, low thresholds and no own metal requirement)

on22cz

While I do actually appreciate cheaper awards, I'm just wondering is this really what we had to wait for over 3 months (+1 due to the delay)?! It seems like some internal competition for the best enhancement has been ran within Finnair. Now I'm getting afraid of cuts in earnings. If nothing, I hope they'll stay smart and credit at least 10% (1 segment) for any AY flight.

lkrt

Why is everyone so scared for slashed earnings? Given their current financial position I just can’t see it coming, could’ve seen it a few years ago but not really now. Over the last few years AY+ has actually been improving and I can’t see why they would want to suddenly take it all back.

Jaenks

Seems that I have to wait until June 4th with award booking. What is weird that the Nordic list award flights(MSQ-TLL) showing 39k miles(Europe award) needed when trying to book and award mileage calculator gives 'Internal server error' message when trying to calculate the miles. Now it should be 19k and and after June 4th 15k miles for roundtrip.

miikkak

Nordics in J 25 000, Europe 50 000 and Europe & Asia 150 160 000.

WilcoRoger

If true, serious discount on LH C redemptions 200k --> 150k and a welcome discount for EUR C 60k --> 50k

intuition

I haven't seen this reported, but according to mail communication, Juniors will be able to transfer points to others free of charge between june 1 and june 30. It is supposed to be possible via finnairshop.com



Is this confirmed?



Do note that new prices are quoted as online only. So comparison is 198k -> 150k. Still, a very substantial change.

miikkak

Should be. The numbers are from reliable source.

FFlash