New Finnair Award Chart introduces Juneyao Sweet Spots

Finnair has finally announced the changes to its award charts as part of its joining the Avios ecosystem and other program changes. The new award charts will go live in March 2024. The chart remains zone-based, allowing for some attractive redemptions…

In addition to having ample time before going live, there are no big surprises for most people with non-connecting itineraries, which is good. Redemption price changes and devaluations can really hurt, especially when they’re sudden without warning.

One thing to note here is that because pricing is per segment, flights with connections have been severely devalued, and should be redeemed elsewhere! We will focus on where the value is.

Finnair has been an unlikely transfer partner of Capital One, and Finnair points have always been less valuable than most other currencies, but have been relatively easy to earn with generous fare class rules, although this has unfortunately now become spend-based. Finnair points have also been very lucrative to buy during certain promotions. The program features some unique perks such as base points conversion to tier points.

A few things to catch up to:

• Finnair points will undergo an automatic conversion to Avios at 3:2.
• We should thus be able to transfer and redeem Avios more freely between airlines now, and also take advantage of new partners and sweet spots
• Most of the award chart will convert at equivalent value, i.e., Nordic flights go from 10,000 points to 6,500 Avios, and Finnair long-haul economy goes from current 45,000 points to 30,000 Avios.
• New availability guarantees include at least eight award seats on Finnair’s long-haul flights – four in economy, two in premium economy, and two in business.
• Perhaps most importantly, partner award flight opportunities are opening up, with some attractive sweet spots in the zone-based award charts

As usual, the Avios award charts between their respective carriers continue to feature opportune discrepancies in pricing. BA charges 16,000 Avios for Alaska Airline’s flights to Hawaii from the west coast, while Finnair’s new chart now has it at 13,500 Avios.

Partner redemptions have been impossibly expensive with Finnair points previously, and that is finally changing. One much welcome partner, Qantas is featured on the chart with Australia-Europe flights going for 47,500 Avios in economy or 130,000 Avios in business (compare with 55,200/144,600 Qantas points).

One interesting opportunity and the main focus of this post is with Juneyao, a Star Alliance connecting partner. Finnair’s strategy for years was based on the Northern route’s speed advantage to connect elsewhere in Europe. This made Helsinki a popular hub not only for Finnair’s Asian flights but others too. With Finnair now having to circumnavigate Russia, it has created a huge time benefit for non-EU airlines, such as in the instance of Juneyao’s flights between Helsinki and Shanghai:

Juneyao has previously made for a tricky redemption. While it was theoretically possible through Finnair, I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t happen even once due to nonexistent availability and exorbitant pricing:

The new chart looks much more reasonable. China-Europe is down from 118,000 to 28,000 Avios. Redeeming 28,000 Avios for EU-China with Juneyao is now in line with redeeming Finnair’s own metal for 25,750 Avios through BA, or 30,000 Avios through Finnair (another discrepancy made worse by Finnair’s recently introduced taxes and fees, which are circumvented with BA).

Some interesting potential sweet spots include China-Taipei/Taiwan for 11,500 Avios, a route that can reach hundreds of dollars during peak times. China-Asia and Russia business class is priced at 24,000 Avios – less than a third of the 80,000 Avios required for China-Europe!

We’ll be awaiting further developments, hoping there’s no taxes and fees surprises, and delve into more partner sweet spots in the charts later…