Took them three months to implement... And only for business class.

Are selected seats affected by level drop? For example you are plat and select extra leg room seats for free and then don't requalify and soft land to gold before flying the flight. Will you be able to keep the selected seats for free?

Will your flight be during the one-month grace period or not? If it falls on that time, you should be safe in your seat.

Otherwise, I believe we have two conflicting experiences: one of the checkin system stating that you have an unpaid seat charge, other one stating that you’ve been accomodated in the seat.

The Platinum level is valid 1 month over the collection period. Should be pretty clear that during that time, you can choose seats as platinum as you are indeed platinum.

I was meaning after that, when I am actually gold.

As said you might be charged. Just do it and report back ;). In worst case you get an unfavorable seat without payment.

I had this issue recently. I selected a complimentary seat in MMB and it showed status "waiting in your cart" with no possibility to complete it. So I left it as it was. Few days later I noticed in the app that the seat selection wasn't there anymore. Luckily the seat that I wanted was still available. I selected the seat again and it was again in the shopping cart with the same status. Then I contacted customer service through the chat and the agent there did something to get the seat confirmed. Now it shows status confirmed also in MMB.

Seat selection is indeed a mess nowadays. Picked again a seat next to my colleague pre-CI but at check-in my seat is totally different. Worst of all a window seat, which is against my preference. Now that I know that I can fix it via web interface (mobile app seat selection at CI still not working), it's somehow ok, but it's annoying that I have to monitor my seat assignment so that I don't end up sitting in row Ö.

This used to never happen (barring equipment change), but now it (random seat changes pre-CI) has happened on almost every flight. I am almost at the point that I could write a strongly worded e-mail to Finnair.

I am revisiting award pricing.

The new fee is on top of real taxes and fees, much like the YQ they used to have. The difference is that this is a fixed zonebased fee. I am trying to understand why they moved from YQ to this. Is there some new regulation against YQ or some kind of taxation law restriction against YQ? Or is this some kind of alignment, where BA has said that no one in their sphere can charge these kind of fees?

At first, it seems this system would be a simplification for the flyer. One fixed fee in points and one fixed fee in €. But looking closer it really isn't:

a) Fees are on top of real taxes, so flyer won't know the price until it is priced out in the search enginge anyway. When table says "120€ fee", you might end up with 169€ or any other number that to most flyers will seem random and not at all what the fee table says

b) The fee table itself was made complicated with "connection fee". So if I, like most non-domestic customers, wants to redeem a longhaul flight, I will pay 20€ for the connecting flight into HEL. If I redeem that same flight as stand-alone the fee is only 15€. Why bother with the connection fee construction at all? If you do zonebased, keep it zonebased. Now it is a mix of zone and non-zone fees.

c) They added some new exclusions to the zones. Now the zones for point prices are not the same as the zones for award fee. What genious did ths?!
Points table
Northern Europe:
Bergen, Copenhagen, Gdansk, Gothenburg, Krakow, Oslo, Reykjavik, Riga, Stockholm, Tallinn, Tromsø, Vilnius, Visby, Warsaw and all flights within Finland

Rest of Europe:
All other flights within Europe plus Tel Aviv.


Fee table
Just looking at shorthaul, we now have 3 completely different zones:
• Finland
• Rest of Europe, excl. Iceland, Israel, Canary Islands and Madeira
• Iceland, Israel, Canary Islands and Madeira

Longhaul is similarly messed up. One points zone and three fee zones. Plus connection fee.

I actually tried to make a full table of points+fee for all combinations, but it quickly goes bananas. If I limit the table to only cover departures in what used to be known as "Northern Europe" it explodes to this:

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...859038e509.png


So really, what is the benefit of this system?!



(And Yes, zones in points table are made up of airports, while zones in fee table are made up of countries)

I just read on a FB group that as of 2nd of Oct. Plats. only can choose their seats for free if bought the highest booking class in Y or J - is that true?

Not true. That is how I read it first, but it means you have guaranteed seat if you buy your ticket at least 48hrs before the flight.
Not as in gusranteed seat 1A etc

Really strange to put the booking classes here since you cant choose them on Finnair. System just gives you lowest available, like for flex you can get R or I.

Sounds very unlikely as Finnair has moved away from booking classes to Superlight, Classic, Flex etc. and it's pretty much impossible to choose your booking class when booking online. However, I could see a move where Superlight tickets would come with no advance seat reservation even for top tier members. But let's wait and see if something really happens on 2nd of Oct.

It has nothing to do with seat selection.

It is about Plat benefit that you are able to get confirmed seat (able to book ticket) even if the flight is fully booked .

After Oct 2, it seems you will have to buy J or Y if you need to buy tickets in such situations.

yeah, that is what I tried to say, you phrased it better. If flight full and you want to book, you'd need to call in anyways.

But I guess in the described situation you need to call in anyway, since the flight is fully booked in your class of service.