With British Airways gutting their loyalty programme, many loyal TLFL readers have been weighing up the options of staying put. Moving to another oneworld scheme, heading elsewhere or becoming a disloyal ‘free agent’ traveller – each having their own benefits. Numerous have their eyes towards the three other Avios schemes from Iberia, Qatar Airways and Finnair owing to the exchange of the currency with BA.
Finnair has been my oneworld loyalty home since late 2021. Not because I need to fly to Finland often nor to ‘stick it’ to BA, instead to buy Platinum status from the airline. While this deal has not happened since late 2022, at the time Finland’s flag carrier allowed members to buy the equivalent of BA Gold with no flying required. For little over £2000, I received Platinum status along with a stash of Finnair Plus points (now Avios) and a host of other benefits. Since then, I’ve learned the ins and outs of the programme – including elements that many others have passed over.
In this post:
The Basics
Finnair Plus has a 12-month earning period based on the date you joined the programme with the status lasting for the remainder of that and the following membership year. If you’re particularly savvy and can time your travel at the beginning of an earning period, you could get up to 26 months of that status level. Status as well as Avios are measured on the amount spent on Finnair flights and miles flown for partner flights.
Soft Landings a Plenty
This is the process of a loyalty programme member being downgraded to the preceding tier, instead of dropping to the lowest tier. Just like BA, you won’t find ‘soft landings’ or similar language mentioned anywhere on the Finnair website. Likewise, there is no guarantee that soft landings are provided.
However, even with minimal paid flights being credited to my account, my account has soft landed every year since becoming a member. Here’s the timeline:
- December 2021-January 2023: Platinum (Oneworld Emerald equivalent to BA Gold)
- December 2022-January 2024: Platinum
- December 2023-January 2025: Gold (Oneworld Sapphire equivalent to BA Silver)
- December 2024-January 2026: Silver (Oneworld Ruby equivalent to BA Bronze)
Along with multiple FlyerTalk members, this suggests that soft landings are as common as they are with British Airways.
Vouchers can be a Game Changer
Finnair is generous when it comes to their core tier benefit of vouchers. Here’s the summary of upgrade vouchers earned:
- Platinum: 12 upgrade benefits
- Gold: 4 upgrade benefits
The amount of upgrade benefits required varies depending on the route length. As an example, if it was a connecting flight from the UK to Singapore upgrading from Economy to Business would require 5 upgrade vouchers, pending availability.
If you shoot for Platinum status, you can gift Gold status to a friend or family member – providing you access to a total of 16 upgrade benefits. You can spend these upgrade vouchers on yourself or other travellers with few limitations.
What I find most interesting is the ability to convert these upgrade benefits to a two for one reward. I’ve used this twice but I’ll focus on my most recent trip to Japan as this was using Avios instead of the old system. By converting four upgrade vouchers for a 2 for 1, you can get some excellent value. I flew from London to Tokyo Haneda (per person per direction) for just 28,250 Avios and £140 in Premium Economy for the long haul sector. While it is not possible to do this on Finnair.com, you can do the flight booking, payment and voucher conversion in one transaction on Live Chat, Gold/Platinum WhatsApp or phone.
If you’re lucky enough to be a Platinum member, you can go one better than this. Convert four upgrade benefits to a two for one and combine with some of your remaining upgrade benefits for class upgrade. I did this for my trip to Bangkok where I booked a 241 in Economy class and then used upgrade vouchers to Business Class. This was insane value with just 30,000 points spent plus £130 per person – in exchange for using a total of 14 upgrade vouchers. At the time I was voucher rich and Finnair Plus points poor, meaning it was logical to use these up for this exceptional value.
How is your loyalty strategy shaping up after the changes to The British Airways Club? Drop us a comment down below.
9 comments
Great tips, thanks for sharing. Are there any other hidden benefits that you can share re other OW FF programs?
Qatar for the wife and I, as we are Diamond status with Accor hotels, have linked our accounts and only need to book one flight with Qatar for activate the top status swap for Qatar Platinum (Emerald), which is what we have now with BA (although that expires in April 2026 and we won’t ever spend money with BA again unless it’s absolutely necessary).
We were genuinely surprised that other airlines didn’t jump at the chance of taking BA Gold customers like us with an easy status swap; a very lucrative opportunity missed for reasons I am unable to fathom.
Funnily enough I actually wrote to Emirates, Finnair and Qatar in hard copy by courier and whilst they didn’t offer a swap, Qatar were the only one of the three to bother replying. I have now booked flights with Qatar to Cape Town in March ‘26 and back from Australia this December using Avios. Cheaper, easier and far more availability than with BA.
I find myself barely flying BA now by comparison to the last few years where I was Gold and flying monthly. I feel voting with my feet is the only way. It used to be fun earning status and now I just don’t feel the need to remain loyal at all. Thanks for sharing the inner workings of Finnair’s loyalty programme.
Thanks, that’s helpful. Have credited 3 flights now to BA so too late. I was looking at Iberia as I fly with them the most but was really difficult to understand. Using the avios website for Iberia shopping is now easier at least. Maybe next year. Do any OW partners have credit cards for UK residents?
Thank you for this although due to medical issues, I still struggle to understand all these. I’ve just booked and paid for my flights from LHR – HEL return on Finnair but put my BA FF number in for the moment. I have booked HEL – DOH – PER – DOH – HEL and have also put down my BA FF as I just don’t know what else to do.
I am a BA Silver member and so is my husband but not sure how to make the best use of this Australia trip – I won’t retain Silver with BA before end of March.
Any ideas from those more savvy that I am ?
Your QR flights will earn BA tier points based on distance and cabin. If business you’ll earn around 4200 BA tier points for HEL-DOH-PER return. Your finnair flight will earn too. You’re probably 3000 tier points short of BA Silver for that trip. Hope this helps
thank you 🙂
@Callum, t be super clear, are you saying join Finnair and use their FF number for all future OW flights, rather than BA, and go faster up the tiers? (I have BA silver) Are the chances of rising thru the tiers on Finn Air any better? Are they using the old BA system?
Really useful info. We have not moved to another scheme yet because we wanted to make the most of our Gold benefits before April 2026, but Finnair definitely looks appealing. Plus, they have more flights to Asia, which is where we want to go. Thanks for the info.
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