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Finnair has launched a new points sale which is giving the opportunity to buy Plus Points for 0.69cpp. That can be a good deal, but what might be of more interest is that it gives you the chance to buy Avios for 1.04cpp……eventually.
The Deal
- Get up to a 100% bonus when buying Finnair Plus Points:
- Buy 5,000-19,000 points & get 40% bonus
- Buy 20,000-49,000 points & get 60% bonus
- Buy 5,000-99,000 points & get 80% bonus
- Buy 100,000-200,000 points & get 100% bonus
- Direct link to offer.
Key Terms
- Expires September 18, 2023.
- Points will be added to your account 1–3 days after the purchase.
Quick Thoughts
The best rate here is when buying 100,000-200,000 Finnair Plus Points as it means you’re buying them for 0.69cpp. While Finnair doesn’t (currently) have an amazing award chart, being able to pick up points for as low as 0.69cpp could make sense.
What makes this offer a little more interesting is that Finnair recently announced that they’ll be adopting the Avios award currency in 2024. As part of that process, they’ll be converting Plus Points to Avios on a 3:2 basis. That means that if you buy enough points to get the 100% bonus and hold on to them long enough for them to get converted to Avios, you’ll effectively be buying Avios for 1.04cpp.
That’s a pretty good deal if you’re in the market for Avios, but it’ll be a case of practicing delayed gratification. Finnair’s full immersion into the Avios ecosystem is currently slated to happen in “early 2024” or “spring 2024”. In 2024, spring is due to run from March 19 to June 20, so you could potentially be looking at a full human gestation period before your Finnair Plus Points give birth to Avios. Considering Chase is currently offering a 30% transfer bonus to Avios and we’ll no doubt see bonuses from other transferable currencies in the meantime, that might be a preferable option if you don’t want to have to wait many months to redeem these as Avios.
As with most airline and hotel loyalty programs, Points.com processes payment for these points purchases. That sadly means it won’t code as a travel purchase, but you should be able to earn a little bit of extra cashback by clicking through from a shopping portal – here are the current rates. It also looks like transactions are charged in Euros, so it’d be best to pay for a purchase with a card that charges no foreign transaction fees.
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What kind of award availability does Finnair have? I just checked a few random flights next year and no award tickets were available. There were plenty of cash tickets.
I bought points during the same promotion last year. Somehow I ended up with about 300,000 finnair points for $2,000. It bought me four one-way business class tickets to Rome. I still have 70,000 points left and still have several upgrade certificates to use. Best of all it gave me OneWorld Alliance Emerald status for a year and a half and gets me access to most of OneWorld Alliance’s best lounges.
I really didn’t expect all those benefits when I initially bought the points. Does anyone know if I will again earn Emerald status if I purchase points through this promotion? And when they do convert into Avios, will I be able to use them directly with British Airways?
Thanks, Ed
I think that currently, the airlines that use Avios allow you to transfer that currency between them. I’ve done this with British Airways, Qatar and Iberia. Hopefully, upon full adoption of Avios, Finnair will do the same.
Yes, they’ve confirmed that you’ll be able to use them directly with BA in spring 2024.
Hi Ed, how did you acquire OneWorld Emerald status if you used points to book the flights?
Thanks,
Amit
I believe there was a finnair promotion where 25% of the points you bought counted towards status in the past. Also finnair allows you to convert points into status points as well? not sure if this is still possible
Interesting Jay. Did not know that any airlines let you do that. Then again, I’m not that familiar with Finnair.
Thanks.
It was an amazing promo. I don’t see any sign of it being renewed unfortunately. Maybe they will do it during black friday or toward the end of the year. I’m hesitant to max out the points I can get here just in case. That said, they haven’t run that promo since 2021.
One big downside of these being charged in euros is I don’t know of any cards that do more than 1c per dollar but also have no foreign transaction fees (e.g. CFU and doublecash both have foregin transaction fees)
How did you end up getting the upgrade certificates and what are the T&Cs on those?