OHKRT

miikka

It depends also somewhat on route and timing, my personal best was HEL-LHR with A350 where there were 1 Lumo (not me that time) and 50 Platinums (myself included)! After greeting the Lumo, the purser gave just a generic "good morning and welcome onboard everyone" speech in Economy Comfort section which was full of those Platinums. This was Monday morning first flight to London so understandably the most popular flight for frequent flyers heading out for the new work week after the weekend.

During the time when they still handed over the newspapers, it was funny to see some of the European flights where in the beginning of the Economy all 6 passengers took newspapers in each row. Traditional Platinum heavy flights are any Asia - Finland flight just before Midsummer.

FFlash

miikka

I am not sure if there is such large-scale danger that Lumo is becoming a card for every person. It is still rather high level of limit which you need to achieve, of course easier for people who can travel continuously in business class but if you are tied into economy then it is something where you need to spend rather much time onboard.

And I think that in certain time and certain routes, there are quite many Platinums but then if you look from wider perspective, it is not necessarily that common still. Choose some less obvious (e.g., not the first during the morning, not the last flight back home) and you start seeing that you are sometimes the only one onboard with Platinum.

Most likely completely my imagination but the closer to Lumo I got, the more personalized the Platinum started to become - more those non-existing empty seats next to me, more visits from pursers and quicker upgrades from waitlist. So I felt all the time that I was getting value for my status, actually, the past one year has been the best Platinum year I have ever had. And Lumo came as a surprise, I didn't expect to be able to reach it one year ago but then it started to come closer and closer. I am not convinced that there are that many people who have this hobby of collecting Lumo or Platinum just because they want it and are ready to spend their own money for it - and work related travel is always something which can rapidly change, corporate decides to switch their preferred airline or something else changes how much you can travel and there goes Platinum and Lumo.

And there are people who travel more than Lumo requires but are not achieving Lumo status because they prefer the schedule and routing thus spreading their spending over several airlines and alliances. Lumo (and to certain extent Platinum) already requires that you focus more into Finnair especially if the travel class is economy.

intuition

Can I just debunk that a little?

A HEL-ARN pax in 58Ö has to take 75 r/t flights and spend approx 150 hours onboard to become Lumo.
A HEL-DEL pax in 1A has to take 14 r/t flights and spend approx 197 hours onboard to become Lumo.
If that J-pax already is Lumo the tier bonus kicks in ans helps J lumo substantially and only 11 r/t are needed. Still approx 158 hours onboard though.

Different city pairs yield different numbers of course but my point is that it is not fair to claim Lumo in J is the easy way.

OH-LGG

Probably those who are Lumo, they are paid or compensated for that sitting 150 hrs or 197 hrs.

Trav1970

miikka

Okay, I didn't try to make it sound like very easy task - just coming from point collection point of view, it would be at least some times easier ... Not necessarily easy still. Not something which I would consider someone would just do without investment and consideration.

I think there are few kind of passengers:

• Have to travel because it is part of the work, might as well also collect the status, travels either in business or economy - status will come as a part of the work eventually
• Travels for leisure, typically leisure traveler will not gain any highest level of statuses (they have life outside of travel )
• Well ... travel as a hobby where the status is one of the goals or at least important side benefit in addition to seeing interesting destinations

I would claim that the last group of people isn't significant, it is very visible in FT but not outside of FT. The biggest group is likely those who travel for example weekly/frequently between branch offices/hq, office/client or something like that and they are basically inside the first group. They would any way land to appropriate status level no matter where the levels are set - it is just a question how many of those are within that status but can those be seen as "everymans cards" any longer as those are coming with all of those hours onboard (work).

My point was more towards that I think Finnair has considered this carefully, they likely planned certain amount of Lumos when they launched it and have prepared that the group will grow a bit. Some of the Lumos will stay, some of those will drop eventually so the number of Lumos likely will stabilize to something they could have predicted before launch. Are there too many Platinums, you can sometimes end up to the flight which is Platinum heavy but then there are also situations where you don't meet many of them in the same environment, I think the previous adjustment of the levels ensured that Platinum is still reasonably challenging.

And then there is always the fact that people will make a note about environment when it is familiar to them. You buy a new car and suddenly it feels like practically every car driving in the street is exactly like yours, you reach Platinum and Lumo and suddenly it feels like all the people you meet are in the same level. I think it is just that you start paying attention more towards things which are common with yourself and notice them more easily.

OH-LGG

miamiflyer8

1A on HEL-DEL 11-14 times is more fun than 150 ATR tortures

OH-LGG

And 197 hrs on board is more fun than 150 hrs on board.

spek

spek

intuition

I agree with your reasoning, it was just the part about hours spent that didn't fit.

Yes, I too think they planned tier requirements pretty carefully. Especially the discrepancy in requirements between points and segments indicates they had a target number in sight. I think the current levels (plat and lumo) are just about what they wanted. I am not so sure they did calculate future effects (ie the stable lumo body level) but that's just my two cents.



I agree on your grouping, and that the hobbyists are few in comparison. However, it takes only 30 hobbyists to run for Lumo and the group instantly expands by 10% - that is pretty significant and the hobbyists may end up being a significant subset of the Lumo tier over time.
So I am thinking that the group probably won't grow "too big" for Finnair's plans, but it's compostion may become something they didn't plan for. Just speculating.

True. There is also a "statistical" reason why a Lumo suddenly sees many lumos.

I'd say there are a few routes that spawns lumos, eg HEL-ARN, HEL-OUL and maybe HEL-LHR too. If these are the routes where most Lumos get baked, then it is pretty likely that your new lumo card was raised here too. And so you are already in this group of people flying first flight out and last flight home on one of the FF heavy routes.
And because the nature of segment Lumo is to fly often, both they and you will be there every monday morning taking that first flight out.

We should remember that Lumo is the only super-tier that has a segment qualifier and that will of course affect how often Lumos are seen onboard these commuter routes.

intuition

If they put ATR on DEL-route there will be many hours of fun for Lumos