kauppias

Indeed and all the promos exclude those like me who were going for LUMO so I have just figured on staying plat for 24months instead and redeeming like crazy once travel resumes that is

zxcv1

I'll take a pass on this one, the offer is terrible. This offer (0.77 cents per point) is 20.3% more expensive than the sale in November 2020 (0.64 cents per point + bonus tier points). Equivalently, the last sale gave you AY Basic → Platinum for 1931 eur including the 6-month prolongation of January 2021 and around 75k points to spare, while this one gives you only 83% of the way from AY Basic → Gold for 1545 eur i.e. not giving even Gold, yet only 4 months have passed in between them and the worldwide situation has not improved at all.

srieppo

Did you get some newsletter of this latest promo? I didn't get any. I have checked all boxes in Finnair plus messaging but I don't get these. I only got an email about flight deals to Lapland on Tuesday and only other info was about the one-way flights

srieppo

This deal only gives you 50% into Gold. One can't buy more than half of the tier points needed. The fact that the bonus TP in the last deal counted as points flown not as points bought, made it such a remarkable deal.

Going to pass too. I got the last deal to get platinum. Wouldn't even need any TP if they offered as Lumo wouldn't be in reach anyway.

I might buy some points if there was a 50% discount on all purchases, smaller amounts too. But I don't want to buy 100k+ because I started with the MC and Plussa thing and reap in 20k per month with that, although that might slow down a bit soon.

ffay005

100 000 points would be about 770 EUR. I'll pass this as well as I have some 500k points already. But it's not terrible value if you need 400 EUR Euro-Y tickets.

OH-LGG

I understand Finnair is on the edge of cliff and needs cash but who buys AY points without knowledge what is going to happen to AY and AY Plus?
Right now AY Plus is only virtual program on AY www -site without any benefits and future of their business model is more than unclear.

Extra Mile

Yes, this! It would make more sense: ”buy Future voucher of european J destination (450e) and you can use it any european destination when it’s time to fly!”

srieppo

On what are you basing this? What I have read is that Finnair has hundreds of millions in cash and they could borrow more. 824 million at end of 2020 what I found. I would hardly say that is on the edge of a cliff, although they do lose almost 2m per day. And even if it was, I don't believe the government of Finland would let it fall. In fact they are negotiating a loan of 500m. Also the stock is at the same level as Jan 2020, so seems like investors believe in Finnair too. The 2m loss will probably drop when vaccines are starting to kick in.

I think these promos are more about selling future flights than collecting urgent money. I very much doubt this new campaign gives more than a million or so. I believe they are more like "pay now and travel later without needing to know your destination now". Most importantly commit to AY. Of course you can also fly other OW with the points but in that case Finnair probably pays the other operator less than they got by selling the points. I also think they expect some of the points to be spent on upgrades which are cheaper to provide than reward flights. Finnair also controls the availability of those reward flights, so they probably get people on flights that wouldn't be full anyway.

Loyal customers are what they need most at restart and can't really screw people too much with these deals. Could be legal consequences if the decided to scrap the entire AY+ and void all points that people bought.

OH-LGG

Too early to say anything about Finnair's future. Pandemic is getting worse day by day and this can be only a start.

Now government has protected AY but how long tax payers (debt) money can be used for paying leasing bills of mostly stored AY fleet and other fixed costs. It's only an airline and in the near future tax payers money is needed in many places when all damages begins to be repaired.

Buying now AY points you get points on your account but can be used when and how. How massive cost cuttings change AY Plus, nobody knows. Points can lose their value quickly.
Now its only questions and uncertain future.

mpkz

Ironically the fact that the promos are worse suggests that Finnair's position is better. The "get 100% free points + status points" offer suggested desperation, the current offer less so. I agree that if recovery from corona is slow, AY+ has a risk of being devalued (if they go the cost-cutting route) but I suspect Finnair as an airline will remain solvent and AY+ points will have SOME value. I didn't buy in the latest round but bought when points were being doubled and just missed the points+status points offer due to not paying attention.

zxcv1

To me these point sales are a sign of desperation by AY still. I think the vast majority of people just don't bother with the comparisons to past offers, or computing TP/eur, or coming here to read offer analysis. They just see -40% and go for it.

If they wanted to encourage flying activity, a double TP and double AP points promo works much better. Another such double promo is very likely coming after covid-19 statistics are again doing what they did in summer 2020 until things went bad again in the winter of 2020-2021.

While AY isn't burning cash in the same way as the likes of CX (in addition to a hostile policy environment from Beijing), Mr. Manner has on several occasions warned that AY could permanently become a smaller airline if Sanna Marin does not soon take positive action, or e.g. should they lose the coveted LHR slots, which can cost north of eur 50M in the inter airline slot trading markets. AY has a very nice position in LHR slots, which is an important feeder especially for their Asia routes, and which they just cannot lose. Explains the high frequencies to LHR even during covid. Mr. Manner has said that at least in the short-term AY will most certainly be a smaller airline due to covid-19.

So we must then judge what is the acceptable trade-off between the increased volatility, and the exceptionality of the offer.


Edit. Here's the Finnair Plus point purchase promotion data points over the past 2 years. The change due to covid-19 (March 2020) is that less "upto" and higher limits for the point purchase amounts. Points have become something they are more and more desperate to sell, while in the past they were more of a thing you got from flying.

Can buy max. 100k points before any bonuses are applied:

• 23APR19 - 29APR19, 50% bonus, 0.86 eur cents/point.
• 01JUN19 - 30JUN19, upto 30% off, 0.90 eur cents/point.

Can buy max. 120k points before any bonuses are applied:

• 20AUG19 - 16SEP19, upto 40% off, 0.77 eur cents/point.
• 12NOV19 - 09DEC19, upto 50% bonus, 0.86 eur cents/point.
• 18DEC19 - 23DEC19, upto 40% bonus, 0.92 eur cents/point.

Can buy max. 150k points before any bonuses are applied:

• 20JAN20 - 18FEB20, upto 25% off, 0.97 eur cents/point.
• 16JUN20 - 30JUN20, 100% bonus, 0.64 eur cents/point.
• 20AUG20 - 16SEP20, upto 35% off (for plats/gold), 0.84 eur cents/point.
• 03NOV20 - 16NOV20, upto 100% bonus + 25% of the bought points incl. the bonus as tier points, 0.64 eur cents/point.
• 17DEC20 - 30DEC20, 40% off, 0.77 eur cents/point.

Can buy max. 200k points before any bonuses are applied:

• 25FEB21 - 15MAR21, 40% off, 0.77 eur cents/point.

srieppo

There is an article about the NOV20 deal in Finnair Blue Wings https://www.finnair.com/fi-en/bluewi...points-2241182

ffay005

According to the article, 3000 people bought on average 72 000 points pp. Using the 0.64 €/point rate, AY made 138 million euros!? Wow!

srieppo

No the rate was 0.64 euro cents not euros. Also that rate was if you bought over 200.000 points. Smaller purchases got a smaller bonus. But if everyone had gotten the best rate then it would have been about 1,37M. But considering many people bought less, I think the amount collected would be closer to 2M.

ffay005

Oh, of course, how stupid of me!