Hey guys! I know some of you are really good at this kind of thing... I need to get to Lieksa Finland July 21-25 and want to do as much of it as possible on Skyteam. The airports I was told I could come into were Kuopio or Joensuu. Anyone know what my best options for flights are? Thanks!

Finnair is your only probable choice. They are NOT SkyTeam.

How far are those towns from Helsinki? Excellent rail connections from Helsinki to anywhere else in Finland.

To fly all the way you have two choices:
1. ST (e.g. KL, AF) to HEL and then AY from HEL to KUO
2. ST (e.g. OK, SU) to RIX and then BT from RIX to KUO
Only AY & BT fly to KUO, I believe.

I was able to book J on ST all the way to Finland and back through CDG for 100,000 miles July 18-25. Outbound MKE-ATL on DL. ATL-AMS-HEL on KL. Inbound HEL-AMS-CDG on KL. Four days in Paris and then CDG-MSP-MKE on DL.

It appears OP wants to pay for the trip, not use miles.

The only thing I'll point out for the OP's benefit is to be careful of the AF-coded, AY-operated CDG-HEL flights. You will not earn SkyMiles for these, since AY isn't a SkyTeam member. You need to book an AF-operated flight to earn miles.

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Booked a combination of AS, DL and KL to HEL last year- probably simplest to book into HEL and connect via AY or rail to maintain Skyteam.

What did you do that you are being sent to Lieksa? The reason I say that is because I had to go to Outokumpu a number of times and the nearest airport there is also Joensuu. You are pretty much stuck with Finnair in Finland. But they are very efficient and that flight is very short, about an hr total. DL has codeshare with KL going to HEL, so you can pretty much keep it on DL all the way to HEL. Finland is beautiful in the summer and pretty much daylight all day. So you can play golf at night. Or do what a lot of Finns do, sauna and vodka, then jump into the lake. Oh, stay away from that salted Baltic herring. I still don't know how they can eat that for breakfast but they always serve on it the breakfast buffet.

But OW is about marketing carrier. Skyteam is about operating carrier.

ST is a mix, since operating only matters to the level of "Do I get miles?" the fare class used is the marketing carrier's, unlike *A, where you need to guess what the operating carrier's booking class is.

That's always why I specifically ask for carrier interline.

There is also OK (ST member) to HEL, via PRG.

DL flies JFK to PRG.

Since OK isn't part of the JV, it may be harder to get that on a single fare than using AF/KL via CDG/AMS, however.

Thanks for your help everyone! Looks like I will just fly to HEL and do the quick fin air connection the rest of the way. The 100k tic is a good heads up, but the presenter is paying the flight, so I get to save the miles- thanks again!

OP is also trying to go beyond HEL to some smaller airports in Finland, not just get to Finland, although given the alternatives, taking the train and seeing the countryside sounds attractive to me.

I asked the same question to one of my Finnish colleagues from the leading university, regarding my travel to an academic conference in Joensuu. He told me very bluntly that there is no scenery at all and to just take the plane!