BA Avios to upgrade on Finair
 

Hello,

Do you have any insights into how best to use BA Avios to upgrade on a Finair

Many thanks,

Jensenma

You cannot.
See:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/24087999-post7.html

"great" - thought this was one of the benefits being part of an alliance...

Why would you think that?

I would have thought that an alliance, where you earn points across all airlines, would also give you the opportunity to use across all airlines. Giving the ultimate benefit to the loyal customer who sticks to alliance member only airlines.BA allows to use avios on both AA and IB. Have not flown AY before, but would have thought it was similar.

At Staralliance, you can both earn and redeem points across all airlines within the alliance.

BA Avios to upgrade on Finair
 

You can redeem... just not for upgrades. Star Alliance is the same for upgrades I think, but many members block premium inventory for awards, so arguably much worse.

You're confused. You can use your BA avios to redeem for any airline in the one world alliance (IB, AA, CX...) same with star alliance, ie, you can use your United miles to redeem for a Lufthansa flight. However you cannot use your United miles to upgrade a Lufthansa economy ticket to a business class ticket. Same goes for One World.

This is not and most likely has never been a benefit provided by any alliance as far as I know.

[off topic]
Some, but not all airlines, in Star Alliance offer cross airline upgrades. But only on high priced Y & B fares. So for most people is useless.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/star-...-y-b-only.html
http://www.staralliance.com/en/benefits/upgrade-awards/
http://www.staralliance.com/en/benefits/how-to-upgrade/
[/off topic]

Actually that's wrong - I can upgrade Lufthansa flights in B and Y class with United's miles.
Also as a UA 1K member I get 6 Global upgrade certificates per year which I can use to upgrade Lufthansa's flights in class Q or above

But you can't do that on all Star Alliance flights. Because it's not a benefit of the alliance.

The OP has apparently decided what alliance benefits should be, though none of the three major alliances have a policy that one can use miles from one alliance carrier to upgrade on any other alliance carrier.

At least with Avios you can uprade on BA, IB and AA which covers a decent range of airlines flying to the UK.

With QF, its QF or bust

There's a lot of false info in this thread. OneWorld is the only alliance that doesn't have an upgrade program. In Star Alliance you can upgrade from most programs to most member carriers but it's only for Y & B plus a few other exceptions, also can upgrade C & D to First on some carriers if I recall correctly. You can not upgrade discount fares though except with miles of that airline's own program. Skyteam upgrade program is very similar.

Only 9 of the 20 Skyteam airlines that are part of the Skyteam upgrade program.

The Star Alliance upgrade program is fairly new, and fairly limited as most travelers are not flying full fare tickets.

I stand by the fact that none of the three alliances have the ability to use miles to upgrade on another carrier as a central feature of their program. Bilateral airline upgrade policies, such as the United/Lufthansa one discussed above, are more common.

Wrong again - you can use miles from almost all Star alliance airlines to upgrade full fare economy tickets on most of other *alliance airlines
List of participating carriers

Adria Airlines
Aegean
Air Canada
Air China
Air India
Air New Zealand
ANA
Asiana Airlines
Austrian
Avianca
Brussels Airlines
Croatia Airlines
EgyptAir
Ethiopian Airlines
EVA Airways
LOT
Lufthansa
Scandinavian Airlines
Shenzhen Airlines
Singapore Airlines
South African Airways
SWISS
THAI
TAP
Turkish Airlines

It's not worth upgrading on short and medium haul flights. It's is when flying long haul.