Aug 18, 2023, 4:44 am
Last edit by: intuition
The real Q&A
Please note that this wiki may have outdated and incorrect info. It was created in a time when official and reliable information was scarce. Now there are a lot more info at https://www.finnair.com/fi-en/finnai...r-plus-changes which is where you should be looking.
What is spend actually?
Fare-component
Travel-extras*
*) Finnair.com says all add-ons are considered spend and linked listing includes hotels, cab and rentalcars. This is likely not true, but clarification is needed.
What is not spend?
"Taxes, fees and other airport- and servicefees"
On 2023-09-20 Finnair webpages changed to specify that everything under "Taxes, fees and charges" is considered not spend, expect something called "Extra fee". What this is and when it will be charged is unknown.
Award flights, regardless of how much you spend on add-ons, will give you zero spend and thus zero Avios and zero tierpoints.
Any spend onboard (eg food and drink items) are not considered spend with Finnair and earns zero.
Currency
Will spend be converted to EUR (or will there be earning tables in each currency)?
If you buy your flight tickets and travel extras in other currency than euro (for example, in USD, GBP or SEK), the total amount of your purchase (excluding taxes, other fees except for possible Extra fee, and other airport and service charges) will be first converted to euros and then multiplied with your tiers multiplier.
How will currency conversion be done (official exchange rates, IATA, Finnair internal?)
Needs clarification
When will currency conversion take place (time of purchase, time of point crediting, time of bookkeping)?
Needs clarification
Tiers
Tiers will have earning multipliers for AY spend - what are they?
Avios = spend x tier multiplier but the multiplying factor needs clarification
Basic 6x
Silver 7x
Gold 8x
Platinum 9x
Lumo 10x
Tiers will have multipliers for partner earnings tables - what are they?
They are said to be between 1,10 and 1,25 depending on tier. The exact multipliers are not disclosed, but likely they will continue as of today (silver 1,1, gold 1,15 and Platinum & lumo 1,25)
The wording on ay.com has changed. There is no longer a mention of tier multipliers for partners. Earning tables are still unknown, but wording on site now is
Tiers will have new thresholds - what will they be?
Same TP requirement for reaching a tier and for renewing a tier.
Finnair Plus Silver 15 000
Finnair Plus Gold 45 000
Finnair Plus Platinum 80 000
Finnair Plus Platinum Lumo 300 000 (of which 250 000 collected from Finnair)
Lifetime tiers - what are their thresholds, how will previous lifetime tier points be accounted for?
Previuis lifetime total will be converted as 3:2.
New tiers are
Gold 2 000 000
Platinum 3 300 000
Tier points
TP is said to be 1:1 with Avios. Will this be true for avios/tp earned on all partner airlines?
Needs clarification
The change-over
When is the change-over done?
Needs clarification
Finnair has communicated different vague things, "early 2024" and "first half of 2024". They have said dates will be anounced "later in 2023".
Finnair have now said end of January as a change over date (also indicating change-over will take several days of processing). The final announcement is said to be 1 month in advance. At this point, we are looking at committing announcement during Christmas break.
Now the fixed date for the changeover is 9 March 2024
What will happen at change-over?
All existing AP and TP at that point will be reduced as 3:2 (-33%).
Tickets booked before change-over will earn according to old rules but with reduction 3:2 (-33%) - a table has been published with values seemingly rounded to nearest 10 avios.
Segment counter will be set to zero and disappear. Regardless of exact change-over date, this text from finnair.com indicates last evaluation will be held 31 January 2024:
What will awards cost?
Needs clarification
Award charts are vaguely said to be reduced by 3:2 on average, but unclear if this Finnair charts or partner charts or a combination. Some charts are not easily reduced 3:2
Please note that this wiki may have outdated and incorrect info. It was created in a time when official and reliable information was scarce. Now there are a lot more info at https://www.finnair.com/fi-en/finnai...r-plus-changes which is where you should be looking.
What is spend actually?
Fare-component
Travel-extras*
*) Finnair.com says all add-ons are considered spend and linked listing includes hotels, cab and rentalcars. This is likely not true, but clarification is needed.
What is not spend?
"Taxes, fees and other airport- and servicefees"
On 2023-09-20 Finnair webpages changed to specify that everything under "Taxes, fees and charges" is considered not spend, expect something called "Extra fee". What this is and when it will be charged is unknown.
Award flights, regardless of how much you spend on add-ons, will give you zero spend and thus zero Avios and zero tierpoints.
Any spend onboard (eg food and drink items) are not considered spend with Finnair and earns zero.
Currency
Will spend be converted to EUR (or will there be earning tables in each currency)?
If you buy your flight tickets and travel extras in other currency than euro (for example, in USD, GBP or SEK), the total amount of your purchase (excluding taxes, other fees except for possible Extra fee, and other airport and service charges) will be first converted to euros and then multiplied with your tiers multiplier.
How will currency conversion be done (official exchange rates, IATA, Finnair internal?)
Needs clarification
When will currency conversion take place (time of purchase, time of point crediting, time of bookkeping)?
Needs clarification
Tiers
Tiers will have earning multipliers for AY spend - what are they?
Avios = spend x tier multiplier but the multiplying factor needs clarification
Basic 6x
Silver 7x
Gold 8x
Platinum 9x
Lumo 10x
Tiers will have multipliers for partner earnings tables - what are they?
The wording on ay.com has changed. There is no longer a mention of tier multipliers for partners. Earning tables are still unknown, but wording on site now is
Tier point qualification and collecting loyalty currency on flights that are marketed or operated* by a partner airline, including Finnair codeshare flights, will continue to be based on the travel class, booking class and distance flown, but the distance flown will be changed from kilometres to miles.
Tiers will have new thresholds - what will they be?
Same TP requirement for reaching a tier and for renewing a tier.
Finnair Plus Silver 15 000
Finnair Plus Gold 45 000
Finnair Plus Platinum 80 000
Finnair Plus Platinum Lumo 300 000 (of which 250 000 collected from Finnair)
Lifetime tiers - what are their thresholds, how will previous lifetime tier points be accounted for?
Previuis lifetime total will be converted as 3:2.
New tiers are
Gold 2 000 000
Platinum 3 300 000
Tier points
TP is said to be 1:1 with Avios. Will this be true for avios/tp earned on all partner airlines?
Needs clarification
The change-over
When is the change-over done?
Needs clarification
Now the fixed date for the changeover is 9 March 2024
What will happen at change-over?
All existing AP and TP at that point will be reduced as 3:2 (-33%).
Tickets booked before change-over will earn according to old rules but with reduction 3:2 (-33%) - a table has been published with values seemingly rounded to nearest 10 avios.
Segment counter will be set to zero and disappear. Regardless of exact change-over date, this text from finnair.com indicates last evaluation will be held 31 January 2024:
In late January 2024, Finnair Plus program will become spend-based. Starting from 1 February 2024 it is not possible to reach tiers based on the number of flights only. At the same time, we will remove the number of flights from members Finnair Plus profile.Until then, we will count all the scheduled Finnair or other oneworld airlines flights that you have flown. If you have flown enough qualified flights or collected enough tier points by 31 January 2024 to renew your current tier, you will maintain your tier. Or, if you have flown enough qualified flights or collected enough tier points by 31 January 2024 to qualify for a higher tier, you will move up to a higher tier.
Needs clarification
Award charts are vaguely said to be reduced by 3:2 on average, but unclear if this Finnair charts or partner charts or a combination. Some charts are not easily reduced 3:2
Finnair Plus to go spend-based and Avios [Implemented 9 march 2024]
Aug 16, 2023, 2:48 am
#32
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 1,612
Problem is, the avios crowd has billions to spend. QR joined avios earlier and all premium awards was hoovered in an instance.
not that ay is premium or anything but I imagine award seats will be even harder to get.
I'm sure they introduce a lot of novel redemtios though, that will help you waste points on pure nothing.
not that ay is premium or anything but I imagine award seats will be even harder to get.
I'm sure they introduce a lot of novel redemtios though, that will help you waste points on pure nothing.
Aug 16, 2023, 2:48 am
#33
Join Date: Jan 2016
Location: Germany
Programs: UA 1K
Posts: 432
What I don t understand is that they are switching to Avios, and wanna become spend based, while BA tiers are not spend based as far as I remember. So I ll take my Avios to BA again, and got the Emerald on tier points. So where is the profit on AYs side? For me it makes no difference if I enter the Plat Wing on AY or BA status - but I guess it makes a difference for AY.
Aug 16, 2023, 2:52 am
#37
Join Date: Aug 2022
Location: Hel
Programs: AY Plat
Posts: 263
Is the 3:2 ratio same as the current ay points to avios exchange rate? I remember reading somewhere that it's possible to exchange those somewhere, maybe in the context of American express points?
Also any experience from other airlines that introduced spend-based tiers, how much worse the change made reaching a status?
Also any experience from other airlines that introduced spend-based tiers, how much worse the change made reaching a status?
Aug 16, 2023, 2:54 am
#38
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: C2
Posts: 651
I heard about the revenue based plans a while ago, but then Avios wasn't on the table so who knows.
Aug 16, 2023, 2:57 am
#39
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Helsinki
Programs: AY Platinum, IHG Gold, Diners
Posts: 1,279
Unpopular opinion: As a traveller where my employer pays for the majority of the trips, I welcome this. Especially as I mostly travel intra-Nordic. It's quite easy to spend 500€ on an intra-Nordic round-trip these days. I do maybe 30-40 of those per year + a few intra-Europe. I have never calculated my spend, but I would estimate it to be somewhere 10k-15k€ annually. I have most of the years struggled to make Plat - and my previous tracking period I exchanged some award points to status points. We obviously don't know the spend limits yet, which is bad, but I have always been a bit jealous of you who qualify with long-haul business tickets. Now, I think this is more fair. I understand this takes away the fun of the 'points game'.
Aug 16, 2023, 2:58 am
#40
Join Date: Apr 2019
Programs: AY Platinum/OWE
Posts: 195
In a way I am personally relieved. AY was for a long time an easier way for me to maintain status, and thus still hanged on even after the baggage-joke. Now I can easily become a free agent without any significant downside (I could probably maintain gold, but honestly thats worthless to J passengers anyway).
Aug 16, 2023, 2:59 am
#41
Join Date: Dec 2019
Location: UK
Programs: BAEC Silver
Posts: 671
BA has already announced that it is going revenue based for Avios earnings from October. Tier point earnings will remain as is, for now at least.
Aug 16, 2023, 3:02 am
#43
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: HEL
Programs: Drawer of Cards
Posts: 423
This, while at platinum and 500K points left, not sure what to do now....sign...
Aug 16, 2023, 3:07 am
#44
Ambassador: Finnair Plus
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: HEL
Programs: AY+ Plat, HHonors Diamond, Hyatt Discoverist, Priority Club Plat Amb, Miles and Smiles Elite
Posts: 5,324
Aug 16, 2023, 3:10 am
#45
Join Date: Oct 2017
Location: TLL
Programs: AY Platinum
Posts: 68