Juntima

This is the first time I try to book an award flight with Finnair. Currently I have about 36x,xxx award points with them and feel like burning it this year. My coming trip is Bangkok - Milan and thought of booking an award flight for this trip, but for the life of me I just could not find any award flight available. I am flexible with the dates, so long it is a 15 days or so trip. I checked for available flight through out the year but to no avail. By the way, I have checked for availability here https://www.finnair.com/int/gb/finna...e-availability

Is this normal with Finnair? I have claimed award flights with other airlines before, not often, but never this difficult. Anyone have any tips on booking an award flight with Finnair? And just to make sure I have enough points, how many points do I need for a Bangkok - Milan business class round trip? I believe 36x,xxx should be enough?

Any advice would be appreciated.

FlyeBye

I would call them and book with the customer service instead. Don't waste your time with searching online for awards. The online award availability is very limited on finnair.com since quite a while.

niksal

BlueNordicSky

Not trying to downplay your award selection, but isn't a trip between Milan and Bangkok one of the cheapest possible long hauls available on Finnair? That's a route I would normally pay for J on and get full 200%+ miles, and use award miles on more expensive routes instead. Anyway, did you only check for business class availability? If you have vouchers available, you could try booking an award flight in economy and upgrade it with vouchers. And if you have the flexibility, you could also look at using award miles to/from Helsinki, and buy a separate ticket to Milan and back, the availability will probably be better.

Juntima

I only thought of getting rid of Finnair award points and be done with it, since I fly with another frequent flyer programme more now, and just happens to have BKK - MXP trip that I could see as a possibility of doing so. I had a thought of claiming BKK - HEL award flight, which seems easier to find, then buying a ticket to MXP separately but that is such a hassle; I might as well claim award flight BKK - MXP with another airline (flying direct even) and keep Finnair award points for another time

I had a chat with customer service on the website who advised me to give Finnair Plus customer service a call instead, but there is no Bangkok number for it, so I sent them email and see how it goes...

BlueNordicSky

How about looking at using the award points on other OneWorld carriers? You might be able to get a HKG-MXP flight with CX using your AY award points, possibly even in F instead of J. That's not something you can book online, you have to ask CS to do it. But if you can actually manage HKG-MXP return in F using award miles, I'd go for that one, and just arrange yourself from BKK to HKG and back. That is, if there is anything remaining after all those error fare bookings CX had. Maybe you could also try QR, QF, MH...

Juntima

Yes how could I forget about claiming with another OneWorld airline. How could I do that on Finnair website though? I just could not seem to find it. I guess it needs a lot more points too, but I will see if I have enough. MH only fly to London I believe, QR and CX sound promising I will look into it. I heard about the error fare on CX, but I was too late...as always. Hopefully one day I would be fast enough to jump on the error fare winner wagon, I would be so proud

BlueNordicSky

It's not something you can do on the website. You have to do through CS. So look up a few possible flights on CX/QR directly, write down the possibilities, contact CS and hope for the best that they find a suitable one. There's a table of OW award spending on Finnair's website under Finnair Plus. According to it, Asia to Europe with CX in first is 330k miles, so you're definitely in the possible range. Good luck, hope you're able to find something! Since you're flexible on dates your chances are much better.

Juntima

I will do so. Thanks a lot for your input

intuition

?!?

I must have magic fingers then. On first attempt: HKG-MXP on CX233/234

BlueNordicSky

Well I'll be, never got that to work myself when I tried (admittedly quite a while ago). That's great, then! Let's hope he will be able to find something better than economy.

intuition

Remember that there are differnt types of awards. Searching for an award on one single OW carrier is possible on the site, at least for a few of the partners like CX, BA and QF. You can search even if you don't have points enough, but you can't see flight specifics unless you have enough points to redeem.

Theses awards have their own table, do not confuse that with the oneWorld award table, as that is something else.


The search is not very good. There are multipple threads here dealing with best way to search for awards, do have a look around.

One quick tip is to register for QF FF-program and use their search as it has a month-calendar and searches for all classes in the same search. When you find avilabilty either try finnair-com or call CS.

Juntima

How did you do it? I tried to search for an award flight with your criteria HKG - MXP for 8-17 July 2019 but there's nothing available. It shows the usual 'We were not able to find availability with your search criteria. Please change the search criteria and try again. (66002 [866])' that I get every time.

Is there another search that I was not aware of? Please enlight me

intuition

It only works for some select airlines / routes so that can explain that.


Anyway, OP wanted BKK-MXP and you want him in J. Here is a seat on "lovely" BA.
250k and 19 300 (!) THB

BlueNordicSky

And not forgetting the quirk for QF FF: it costs money to join, but it's easy to search the internet for codes that will let you join for free. I've always wondered what the whole point of that exercise is.