Everything You Wanted to Know About The Finnair Plus Loyalty Scheme....

Summary

In this comprehensive video, Matt from Matt's Planet dives deep into the Finnair Plus Loyalty Scheme, explaining how it compares to other One World Alliance programs, particularly British Airways (BA). As BA raises its status qualification, leaving many travelers like Matt "homeless" for One World status, the Finnair Plus program emerges as a potential alternative. Matt outlines key features, including membership terms, tier points collection, and key benefits. He also highlights strategies to maximize status both through flying and using points, offering viewers valuable insights into navigating airline loyalty programs efficiently.

Highlights

• Matt feels homeless in the One World alliance following BA's status change, leading him to explore Finnair Plus. 🏠
• Understanding Finnair's membership year is crucial for planning when to join the program. 📆
• Finnair Plus mimics BA in some ways but offers unique features like tier point and Avios synchronization. 🔄
• The option to convert Avios to tier points in Finnair Plus offers a rare and advantageous flexibility. 💼
• Strategizing flights and conversions wisely can significantly lower the cost of achieving high-tier status. 💸
• Finnair’s benefits, such as upgrade vouchers, add value to achieving and maintaining status. 🎟️

Key Takeaways

• BA has raised its status qualification thresholds, prompting users to seek alternatives like Finnair Plus. ✈️
• Finnair Plus operates on a unique membership year based on the date of joining. 📅
• Strategic timing in joining and travel can maximize the duration of status benefits. ⏳
• Finnair Plus allows members to convert Avios into tier points, providing flexibility in achieving status. 🔄
• Achieving or renewing status involves different strategies, including flying with partner airlines like BA. ✈️
• Finnair Plus status offers considerable benefits, such as upgrade vouchers and the ability to gift status. 🎁

Overview

Matt from Matt's Planet takes viewers on an enlightening journey through Finnair's Plus Loyalty Scheme as an alternative to the recently changed BA Executive Club thresholds. As BA's changes render his status nearly unobtainable, Matt explores joining Finnair Plus for status within the One World alliance. Through detailed analysis, Matt breaks down the logistics of achieving status points and the importance of strategic timing when signing up to maximize benefits.

In exploring Finnair Plus, Matt highlights its distinguishing features—especially its flexibility with tier points and Avios. The ability to convert Avios into tier points is a game-changer, allowing members to reach status targets without solely relying on flights. His exploration also underscores the differences in loyalty rewards and program structure and emphasizes using partners effectively to accumulate points.

The video wraps up by exploring the perks of Finnair Plus, with Matt uncovering substantial benefits offered at higher tiers, such as generous upgrade vouchers and the ability to gift status to others. These features provide a compelling alternative for travelers wanting to maintain high-level status within the One World alliance without being tethered solely to BA.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Context The chapter titled 'Introduction and Context' begins with a discussion regarding recent changes made by British Airways (BA) to their Executive Club status qualifications. The narrator expresses disappointment as the new thresholds for achieving status have been significantly raised, making it difficult for leisure travelers to maintain or achieve their status. Despite this, there is an inclination to trust that BA understands its business strategy, and the narrator plans to monitor future earnings announcements to assess the impact of these changes.
• 01:00 - 05:00: Overview of Finnair Plus Program This chapter provides an overview of the speaker's status with the One World alliance, specifically discussing their current situation of being 'homeless' regarding their One World status. They mention that their Emerald equivalent status with British Airways (BA) will expire in September this year, after which they will transition to One World Sapphire status until April next year. The speaker references a previous video where they explored their thought process and options regarding their One World status, and they mention plans to create further videos discussing other One World member programs they are considering switching their business to.
• 05:00 - 08:00: Membership Year and Status Validity This chapter introduces Finnair's loyalty program, Finnair Plus. The speaker, Matt, promises to discuss achieving membership status, the potential costs, and the benefits of achieving such status.
• 08:00 - 11:00: Grace Period and Status Downgrade In this chapter, the focus is on understanding airline status levels, specifically within the One World alliance network. The narrator mentions their transition to using One World status terminology, where British Airways' (BA) silver status is equivalent to One World Sapphire and BA's gold status equates to One World Emerald. The difficulty in using this new terminology is acknowledged.
• 11:00 - 15:00: Earning and Spending Avios and Tier Points The chapter discusses the differences in the tier terminology used by various airlines within the One World alliance, specifically focusing on Finnish airline Finnair and Qatar Airways. It explains how Finnair and Qatar have a gold tier equivalent to One World Sapphire (BA Silver), and a platinum tier equivalent to One World Emerald (BA Gold). The text suggests aiming for the platinum tier if the goal is to access first-class wings and services.
• 15:00 - 20:00: Tier Levels and Status Achievement Strategies The chapter 'Tier Levels and Status Achievement Strategies' focuses on clarifying the complexities related to membership years in various frequent flyer programs. It specifically highlights how Finnair's membership year works, contrasting it with British Airways (BA). Unlike BA, which may have fixed year-end dates, Finnair's program aligns the membership year to the date of joining. For instance, if you join Finnair on March 10, your membership year will conclude on March 31 of the following year. The aim of this chapter is to clear up any confusion surrounding terminology and processes related to achieving and maintaining tier status in these loyalty programs.
• 20:00 - 27:00: Calculating Costs and Strategies for Achieving Status The chapter discusses the strategic aspect of calculating costs and achieving status through careful planning of sign-ups. Despite not having a live account to research from, the narrator has conducted extensive research and received assistance from Fin A's media team to ensure the accuracy of the information provided. However, there is an apology for any potential inaccuracies in advance.
• 27:00 - 32:00: Renewing Status: Strategies and Costs The chapter discusses the strategies and costs associated with renewing membership status in Finair, similarly to British Airways (BA). It highlights that any status achieved within a membership year will be valid for the remainder of that year and the entire following year. For instance, if someone joined on March 10th, their first year of membership would last approximately 12 and a half months until the end of March the next year. Achieving status shortly after joining could extend the status validity to nearly two years. Therefore, the timing of signing up is crucial for maximizing status benefits.
• 32:00 - 35:00: Benefits of Higher Status Levels The chapter discusses the benefits of having higher status levels in airline memberships. It highlights the concept of a 'grace period,' similar to what is offered by British Airways (BA) and Finnair. During this grace period, which is a month for BA, members can renew their status without losing their benefits. This grace period allows members to maintain their status even if they haven't initially met the renewal criteria at the end of their membership year, as long as they renew within this period.
• 35:00 - 37:00: Conclusion and Final Thoughts The final chapter provides an overview of several transition points and tips regarding membership status and benefits. It points out the flexibility of maintaining travel and lounge benefits shortly after the official end of the membership year but warns about the implications of not renewing status on time. This includes changes in point calculation and tier status impacts after the renewal grace period ends. Moreover, it briefly mentions Finnair's distinct approach in handling points collection compared to other airlines, motivating readers to understand their specific guidelines further.

Everything You Wanted to Know About The Finnair Plus Loyalty Scheme.... Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 so hello and welcome to the video now ba has told me and tens of thousands of other members of the Executive Club that they don't want our business they've jacked up the qualification thresholds for status so significantly that it's now virtually impossible for the leisure travel to achieve status but we must assume that ba knows best and I certainly be keeping a close eye on future earnings announcements to see if they actually do but all of this means
• 00:30 - 01:00 that I am now homeless when it comes to One World status the emerald equivalent status I achieved with ba will last until September this year and I should then soft land to One World Sapphire through till April next year I recently released a video where I talked at some length about what my thought process was and what my options might be and I promised to make two videos about the other one world member schemes I was thinking of moving my business to so in
• 01:00 - 01:30 this video I'll talk about Fin A's loyalty program which helpfully is called finair plus I'll talk about how you achieve status how much it might cost you to get there and the benefits that you will receive from achieving status so if that sounds good and the length of this video in the thumbnail hasn't put you off stick around hi I'm Matt and this is Matt's Planet I aim to entertain educate and Inspire with my travel Adventures from
• 01:30 - 02:00 planning to execution I'll show you how you can travel in style for a lot less than you'd think so subscribe so you can come with me now a quick point before we get stuck in I am trying very very hard to use one world status terminology going forwards Ba's silver status equates to One World Sapphire and their gold status equates to One World Emerald using the One World terminology still doesn't come easy to
• 02:00 - 02:30 me but it's important that I do as really annoyingly not all Airlines use the same terminology both finair and Qatar have gold tiers within their programs but they only equate to One World Sapphire which is the equivalent of Ba's silver both finair and Qatar have a tier called Platinum which equates to One World Emerald or ba gold and that is the one you need to shoot for if you want to continue using the first wing and the various first class
• 02:30 - 03:00 one world lounges around the world the terminology really can trip you up so I'm going to try really really hard to make it absolutely clear through this video what I'm actually talking about so finair plus let's start talking about membership years and unlike ba now finair membership year ends are not fixed your year will start when you join the scheme so if you join on March the 10th your year end will be set as March the 31st first I've not actually joined
• 03:00 - 03:30 it yet because there is an optimization opportunity from being very strategic about when I sign up not having signed up though makes some of this video quite hard to research as I don't actually have a live account that I can look at but I've spent many many hours researching this fin A's media team has also very kindly answered a couple of questions for me so thanks to them so I'm quite confident that all of this is accurate but I will apologize in advance if I do get anything wrong
• 03:30 - 04:00 finair though is like ba in that any status you achieve in a membership year will last you for the remainder of that year and the entirety of the next year so if you did join on March the 10th you'd effectively get a 12 and 1 half month first year as it would lap around until the end of March the year after you joined and if you were able to achieve status within a month or so of joining that status would then last for just about 2 years which is why being very careful about when you choose to sign up might be really really smart fin
• 04:00 - 04:30 air is also like ba in that they also have a grace period although it's kind of like a hybrid grace period And as a quick recap a grace period is a period beyond the end of your membership year where your status benefits Prevail Ba's one- month grace period effectively means that if you're able to renew your status within that month you will maintain that status perpetually without ever actually losing it like ba fin air
• 04:30 - 05:00 allows you to maintain the travel and inlight benefits for a month beyond the end of your membership year but there is a hard end to the system based benefits so if you don't retain your status before the end of your membership year when you fly after it you'll still be able to use the lounges but any points you earn will be calculated as per the tier status that you have dropped to now finair handles points collection quite differently to ba so might at first
• 05:00 - 05:30 sound like there's no real difference between the schemes as you can still use the lounges in that grace period but there are some consequences to how points work within finair that we will come to and finair also differs from ba in that it doesn't offer a soft Landing if you haven't retained the status you have by the end of your membership year you will drop not one tier but to whatever tier the status points you did earn indicate that you should be at so if you gather precisely zero tier points
• 05:30 - 06:00 in a year you'll drop all the way back to the entry level tier within their scheme now finair has told me that they will sometimes provide a soft Landing to higher status holders within their program but that is done purely at their discretion and so is not something that you can rely on so all loyalty programs need to track two things status and rewards now ba does this with tier points and with avos and it's important important to
• 06:00 - 06:30 understand the difference and how each side of the equation works when it comes to tracking progress finir also has to track those two things but they helpfully also call them tier points and avos but really helpfully in fin A's program you earn when flying tier points and avos at exactly the same rate so if you earn 10,000 tier points from a flight you're going to earn 10,000 avos what you do with them is different but the way you earn them being unified is
• 06:30 - 07:00 actually really quite handy now I want to talk very briefly about avos here finair offers exactly the same avos as ba Iberia Air Lingus uh Qatar and a few others and they are freely transferable around the Avio Universe I don't believe you can move avos directly from fin a to Qatar but you can move them from finir to ba and then onwards to Qatar there's no Fe for doing that and I believe all
• 07:00 - 07:30 transfers are instantaneous the transfers I've made between ba and Qatar certainly have been and as with ba you can earn avos into fin air scheme by things like Car Hire hotel stays shopping branded credit card use and the like I've not looked at whether fin A's earning rates for hotel stays are better or worse than the other airlines in the group but because an Avio is an Avio you could look to see which scheme gives you the best return for any stay or purchase
• 07:30 - 08:00 that you might have upcoming so tier points they control your progress through the various status tiers finair scheme has five levels you become a basic member when you join and once you've accumulated 15,000 tier points within your membership year you will be promoted to Silver gaining 45,000 tier points within a year so 30,000 more will take it up to fin A's gold tier now remember that's only the equivalent of ba silver but it
• 08:00 - 08:30 is the level at which lounge access will be granted around the One World Airlines and then it's another 35,000 tier Point jump up to 880,000 which is where fin A's Platinum tier kicks in and that's the tier that's equivalent to Ba's gold So ba requires 20,000 new tier points for its gold equivalent and finair requires 880,000 and that makes it sound like fin a is four times as difficult to achieve but it isn't necessarily because the scaling of how you earn points in
• 08:30 - 09:00 those two schemes is radically different and we'll talk about earning tier points in a moment another tier does exist above platinum and for 300,000 tier points you will achieve lumo status although 250,000 of those points needs to be earned on thin air metal so I'm going to assume that's going to be out of reach for anyone watching this video and I'm not going to talk about it any further except to say that it's the equivalent of one world emeralds just as the Platinum tier is
• 09:00 - 09:30 but I will add here that there is no requirement to fly on th air metal at all to achieve any of those lower tiers which is another major attraction of this scheme although flying on thin air and specifically in their wonderful air Lounge seat is by no means an ordeal so you need 45,000 points to reach Sapphire and 880,000 points to reach Emerald hello future Matt here and I made a mist akake now if this is your first time
• 09:30 - 10:00 watching this video carry on you'll never notice except for this bit and if you're re-watching this video I've invisibly mended things and I'll pop up a little bit later to explain the mistake that I've made and if you've started executing a status strategy based on watching this video don't worry the error wouldn't have changed your thinking finair offers two very helpful ways of shortcutting your progress to those totals the first of which is tier
• 10:00 - 10:30 bonuses When You Reach fin A's silver tier which is the equivalent of one world Ruby so isn't really that useful you'll earn a 10% bonus on some of the tier points you will earn when holding that tier and as tier points and avos are earned at the same rate you'll receive that boost on both sides of the scheme so instead of needing 30,000 tier points to get from silver to gold you may actually only need 27,2 73 from flying as your bonus will
• 10:30 - 11:00 give you the additional 2727 that you need and gold status will give you a 15% bonus on some of the tier points that you'll earn so of the 35,000 more points you'll need to get up to the Platinum Status you may only need to earn 3,435 of them and the bonus of 4565 will Top you off points earned at the Platinum tier may give you a 25% bonus and that will be relevant when we talk about renewing status and I'll
• 11:00 - 11:30 explain when the bonus applies to tier points as we go along there is an assumption in there though if the first flight you take earns you 20,000 tier points that will blast you all the way through the basic tier into silver but your status won't have upgraded mid-flight but I'm going to assume that finair systems do effectively promote you mid-flight so I'm going to assume that the 5,000 points you earn into that silver tier will earn that 10% bonus now I'm told that fin air system actually
• 11:30 - 12:00 doesn't do this and indeed it can take a couple of days for flights to credit and for status tiers to get updated so you may find yourself earning points on flights at a slightly lower rate than you were perhaps expecting but it's not really going to make a huge difference so take all of these numbers as being the absolute minimums that you would need to achieve the various status levels
• 12:00 - 12:30 [Music] so that's the first shortcut to status available from tier bonuses the second is available by converting avos into tier points now th air is quite unusual in allowing you to do this now some Airlines including a GN allow you to buy a small number of status points for cash but being able to use the currency of a
• 12:30 - 13:00 frequent flyer scheme to achieve status is actually really quite rare and fin air will allow you to buy 50% of a tier status's requirement once per membership year and there's a 3:1 conversion rate so 1,000 tier points will cost you 3,000 avos now you need 15,000 tier points to reach silver but once you're there you could buy 72,000 tier points to help you reti that status or to help you to
• 13:00 - 13:30 progress to the next tier so instead of needing 30,000 flown miles to get from silver to gold you'd only actually need 222,000 because you could buy the other 72,000 with avos and as I will show you later it is always better to get tier points from Trading avos than it will ever be from flying but a bonus may also kick in which means you'd only need to earn 20455 tier points from flying to get the
• 13:30 - 14:00 30,000 you'd need to move from silver to gold taking into account the avos that you can convert and the bonus that you'll earn and fin A's gold tier equates to One World Sapphire which would give you lounge access around the One World Network and similarly Gold members can buy 50% of the tier points you need to get to gold to help them retain that status or to help progress to the next tier but you can only buy tier points once a year so if your gold is to get to fin Air's Platinum Status
• 14:00 - 14:30 equivalent to one world Emerald which is where the first class lounges kick in you'd skip the 7 a half th000 tier points that would be available to you as you were a silver member on your way through the tiers and you would instead hit the 22 and a half th000 tier points that are available to you once you've reached their gold tier so instead of needing 35,000 tier points from flying to progress from gold to platinum you only need to get 12 1 half th000 tier points from flying taking into account
• 14:30 - 15:00 the gold tier bonus that may leave you a net flying requirement of only 10,870 points to get you from one world Sapphire to Emerald so if you combine both of the boosters that are available in fin A's scheme you'd only need to earn 79% of the points from flying to achieve One World Sapphire and it's 66% of the points from flying to achieve One World Emerald now I said that contributing avos to status is always
• 15:00 - 15:30 going to be cheaper than getting them from flying but how much will they actually cost well I get mine at an average cost of a quarter of a p each as I explain in this video but if you needed to buy points there are a couple of options finair ba and indeed Qatar will sell you avos that's usually not a brilliant deal but they will all regularly have promotions where the price will become much more attractive but if you already earn avos through ba you will have the opportunity to boost them acrossing the ba website and avos bought through a ba boost will
• 15:30 - 16:00 cost you .92 of a p each at least for the first 300,000 you buy over the course of a year and that is a very competitive price and you will struggle to buy avos any other way for Less so as it's three avos per tierp Point you'll be spending 675,000 avos to get the 225,000 that you would want to buy to help you from gold to platinum and that would cost you 621 quids so you might think well I'm able to get a third of
• 16:00 - 16:30 the way to One World Emerald for 620 quid but wait the travel you'd undertake to get you the other 66% of the way to One World Emerald is going to earn you avos and as finir very helpfully gives you those avos at the same rate that they give you tier points it's very easy to calculate how many avos you're going to earn and that will be 53,120 358 from the tier bonuses which gives you 575,000 in total which recoups a
• 16:30 - 17:00 very large chunk of the avos that you would have invested to get the status indeed it will only cost you a net amount of 10,000 avos to get one world Emerald which if you buy them through boosting will cost you a net of £92 so you're actually going to get a third of the way toward WS One World Emerald for less than 100 quid and that's a number you'll see repeated a few times from here on in now that's one world Emerald if Sapphire is is your goal which is an
• 17:00 - 17:30 entirely reasonable strategy because that is the level at which lounge access kicks in then you'll actually make a profit on the avos from achieving Sapphire status you'll only have spent 225,000 to get there but you'll have earned 375,000 giving you a net upside of 15,000 which if you value them at 092 of a p each has a value of 138 quid but probably a lot more because I think most people do better than that when redeeming avos for rewards right so that is all a bit complicated I will admit but hopefully you've been able to follow
• 17:30 - 18:00 along that is how you earn status but it would obviously be much much easier if you could just match existing status across to the fin air scheme and save yourself all this trouble but fin air doesn't seem to be an enthusiastic match offerer I think it's extremely unlikely that fin a indeed any other one world Airline would offer a match to ba members that's not really how alliances work they don't really want to be competing for each other's customers and
• 18:00 - 18:30 although I have seen some reports of th air matching sis status holders I haven't seen any evidence of a more widespread matching program being offered by them Never Say Never but I think you should assume that matching status to fin air even if you're matching a membership from another Alliance it's just not going to happen so how do you earn tier points well the answer is by flying on a one world Airline and there's two calculation methods you need to know about like ba
• 18:30 - 19:00 finair knows exactly how much you've spent on flying with them unlike ba finair does not know how much you spent flying on any other one world Airline so tier points are granted based on the spend you make on flights with finair and on the distance you've flown with any other one world Airline so let's look at TH air flights first they seem to have cribed their calculation methodology from ba as they deduct the taxes from the fair that you've paid
• 19:00 - 19:30 meaning you'll only earn tier points on the actual net amount that you have spent with the airline and like ba the multiplier varies based on the status level that you hold with them ranging from six as a basic member up to 10 as a lumo member but the finair scheme Works in Euros so you need to convert them into pounds because that's the currency many of us watching this video will be spending in which gives you therefore between 7.1 and 11.9 points per pound spent and I did the
• 19:30 - 20:00 sums for US dollar for completeness if that's the currency that you buy your aairs in and that's points earned per pound dollar or Euro spent this is getting a bit mathematical isn't it but please stick with me the thing you need to get your head around is that when flying with th air the price you paid is the only thing that matters so where you fly doesn't matter how many flights you take doesn't matter whether you're getting a good deal or not in a sale doesn't matter if you find a discounted
• 20:00 - 20:30 fair to Bankok with say 50% off there's not really much Point jumping on it because you'll only get half as many points as you would have done by paying the undiscounted feir you just have to do it twice to get the same number of points so counterintuitively you're better off finding an expensive Fair getting your points in one whack which will reduce the amount of traveling you actually have to do to achieve status the mistake I made in that original version of this video is that you do not earn bonus tier points when flying On th
• 20:30 - 21:00 air the increase in the earning rates as you progress through the tiers is fin Air's mechanism of rewarding their higher status holders so if you're building status from a standing start from the basic tier you'd need to earn the full 375,000 mi from flying to make it to the sapphire equivalent tier and the full 575,000 mi from flying to make it to the emerald equival valent tier and as those points are earned solely
• 21:00 - 21:30 based on spend you can easily calculate the total cost of achieving status when flying solely on thin air you'd still max out the avos that you would convert but as you wouldn't get the tier bonuses you'll need to fly a little bit further to achieve those statuses and as tier points and avos are calculated at the same rates it will still cost you the same to convert those avos as you would still earn the same number you just flying a little further to get them
• 21:30 - 22:00 rather than getting some of them via the bonus so one world Sapphire would cost you about 4700 and one world Emerald would cost just over 6,000 and that's from flying solely on fin air and those TP per pound numbers look a bit odd but they're the weighted average of the various tiers that you're moving through so now we have a costing anchor let me just quickly pop back to why you would want to maximize the avos that you contribute towards status fin air allows you to get to One World Sapphire by trading 225,000
• 22:00 - 22:30 avos for 75,000 tier points which would cost you 27 and that is a tier Point per pound ratio of 36 which is 3 to five times what you would earn from actually flying On th air and the rout to One World Emerald unsurprisingly delivers that same ratio so you would always maximize the tier points you earn from spending avos but what about flying on other One World Airlines well well fin air has again cribbed off ba and has published a
• 22:30 - 23:00 series of tables showing what you would earn on those other Airlines and those tables are based on the fair code that you book and the mileage that you fly you will very quickly notice that flying on ba Iberia and American delivers significantly higher rewards than from flying on other One World Airlines which is all a bit ironic but as I've said a few times now I very happy to still fly on ba as long as it's on my terms and if the best way to achieve High One World
• 23:00 - 23:30 status with th air is by flying on ba I'm going to be absolutely fine with that hey the lounges should be nice and quiet the 10 15 and 25% bonus tier points and avos you get from fin a status applies to flights taken on ba AA and Iberia flights and on any fin air code share flights not on fin air itself though in case this wasn't complicated enough already
• 23:30 - 24:00 now in my original moan about Ba's changes I said that it felt like a favorite hobby had been taken away from me no more pouring over Google flights no more optimizing through Matrix ITA but now I've studied the fin air scheme I think that hobby is back you now need to find Long flights at low prices in premium cabins and Google flights and Matrix ITA are both very helpful in doing so I will mention here that th Air's distances are all measured in
• 24:00 - 24:30 Miles rather than in kilometers so you're probably looking for flights on ba Iberia and on American Airlines which means the old favorite tierpoint run routes they're back in the frame Dublin to London to Los Angeles with a six-month Advanced purchase can be had for about £1600 that's an 11,470 MI round trip and flying in a discounted business cabin under an r or an i fair code will deliver you 150% of
• 24:30 - 25:00 the miles flown into the fin air scheme the specific number of th air tier points you'll earn will depend on the tier that you're at when you travel because of those bonuses but I've assumed a 12 a half% average bonus between the silver and the gold tiers which means you would probably get something like 19,400 tier points for that £600 investment and that is a points per pound ratio of just over 12 quite a lot
• 25:00 - 25:30 better than you'd get from flying on fin Air's planes now if you got all of the points you needed at that same points per pound ratio you would achieve One World Sapphire for just under 2800 quid and one world Emerald for just under 42,000 and in both cases you'd max out the avio's contribution remember ba wants you to spend well over £75,000 and £20,000 to get the equivalent status through them and because fin air scheme is based on distance rather than on legs
• 25:30 - 26:00 there's no needs to add intermediate stops in New York and Las Vegas or whatever except of course where adding such legs increases the distance and if you were to Zig down to Madrid or even Zig back to Helsinki on your way to the West Coast that would significantly increase the number of miles flown the fair wouldn't change much but it would increase the return you'd get GC map.com by the way is the best website I know for quickly finding out distances between airports a couple more examples but you can probably already see that
• 26:00 - 26:30 sniffling out these opportunities really is quite good fun Ba's discounted first class Fair discount being a relative term obviously is a and that earns you 250% of Miles flown so you can fly Oslo to London to San Francisco with the longer leg in first for £2,800 which will deliver you 33,000 fin air tier points and I have taken into account that the two legs will have different Fair buckets and that's still using that average 12 1/2%
• 26:30 - 27:00 bonus rate so that's a very similar 11.8 tier points per pound spent which means it would cost about the same to get status but I'd much prefer spending my time in Ba's first cabin rather than its business cabin and you'd get the status from flying fewer actual hours because you're accumulating them quicker in that more premium cabin a couple more Dublin to bogar delivers 12.3 tier points per pound but the best I found was Oslo to bu's area which is actually a really long way but it delivers you 16.4 tier
• 27:00 - 27:30 points per pound spent and if you could get all of the tier points you needed at that same rate which may not be that easy I will concede you would get emerald stes through th air for about 3300 quid which is not a lot more than you used to be able to get it for from flying in ba under their old scheme now I will also admit that I found that Oslo to buen as Aries Fair a couple of weeks ago and haven't been able to replicate it since but it does allow me to make point that I have merely scratched the
• 27:30 - 28:00 surface here of what is possible there could well be even better opportunities in that ba first cabin particularly if you buy your fair during a sale I hear that there are some us domestic routs that are quite attractive Los Angeles to Puerto Rico has been mentioned and I also hear that there are occasionally excellent fairs from North America all the way across to Asia which is a flaming long way which earn you a lot of tier points but it could be quite a fun experience
• 28:00 - 28:30 I've also not spent a lot of time looking at nonone World Airlines because their earning rates are quite considerably lower but who's not to say that there aren't opportunities sitting out there if you can just find them you would need long cheap legs in premium cabins so one of my favorite hobbies seems to be back and I can imagine myself spending many happy hours trying to truffle out these opportunities going forwards so that's how you achieve status I think we can all see why no one
• 28:30 - 29:00 else has made this video before me so if you optimize when you join the fin air scheme and undertake that flurry of travel immediately on joining you'll get status for pretty close to two years so just under £3,300 for one world Emerald status for two years 1,700 quid a year that works for me renewing status gets a little trickier option one is to renew in the last year of holding the status that you wish to renew if you're
• 29:00 - 29:30 Platinum you'll be able to buy 50% of the tier points you need to retain it which will be 40,000 plus you'll be getting a 25% tier Point bonus when flying on ba AA or Iberia which means you'll only need 32,000 tier points from flying to renew status you'll still want to maximize the avios you contribute to Renewal and that will cost you a net of 80,000 avios which if you buy them through boost should cost you 736 quid
• 29:30 - 30:00 and if Sapphire is your sweet spot you'd need to buy the 225,000 avos to convert which will have a net cost of £414 and if you renew status solely from flying On th air you'll need to fly the full 40,000 M as there's no tier bonus you'd be getting a 10.7 points per pound return as a platinum member so it will cost you a total of about 4 and a half Grand and if Sapphire is your sweet spot
• 30:00 - 30:30 renewing solely by flying on fin air will cost you about 2,800 quid still a lot less than ba is demanding but it is a lot more than the ,700 on average you might have spent to get up to platinum in the first place that's flying solely on F air though and as we've seen you probably wouldn't want to do that flying on ba Iberia and American Airlines will earn you a 25% bonus as a platinum member so that fair I found to bu's aies
• 30:30 - 31:00 actually increases to an 18.2 points per pound return with that higher Platinum bonus which means you could retain Emerald status for about 2500 quid and as you'd actually earn more tier points from that one trip to Buena areas than you'd actually need to maintain status you could do it in one trip and to maintain One World Sapphire status would cost around 1,600 quid the next option is to not go out of your way to retain status when you have it but to
• 31:00 - 31:30 allow yourself to drop at the end of the membership year and then get back up again from scratch as I mentioned finair may offer you a softer Landing than that which would make regaining status a bit easier but let's assume they don't so you'd be back to zero and you'd just repeat whatever it was you did that got you up to Sapphire or emerald in the first place and if you were to do that travel within a month of your membership year ending you would do so with the status benefit benefits When traveling of the expiring status and if you were
• 31:30 - 32:00 able to complete it and regain the status you would then have it for that year the next year which would be again about 23 months all of that means that with careful planning you could attain and retain One World Emerald status for about ,700 a year and that's quite a lot less than renewing it every year and again that works for me it's essentially the same process as we used to try to do retaining status with ba by traveling within the grace period but the maths is
• 32:00 - 32:30 a lot more complicated because of the various bonuses that fin air offers you and this all assumes that you do no other flying frankly it would be a bit dared to do this get status and then sit at home for the rest of the year so this would all become obviously easier if you already have one World Travel plan personally or for business credit those trips and then use the maths you've seen in this video to work out what you would need to do to get yourself up to the status level you wanted to make maintain and talking about renewals brings me
• 32:30 - 33:00 back to the point I started out with as regards timing when you join the club now if you're happy to drop out of whatever status level you wish to maintain and build back up again it will be cheaper and easier to find fairs in a low Peak month like February than it will in a peak month such as July and your own personal circumstances May dictate when you are free to travel and that's why I haven't joined the finair plus scheme yet because I want to put a little bit more thought into when my ideal tierpoint running month might be
• 33:00 - 33:30 to renew that status and one last topic talks about the benefits of the status teers there's the usual Suite of one world benefits that you're probably familiar with but fin air offers a few others three of which I want to mention in particular the first is upgrades as a gold card holder with finair you will get four upgrade vouchers to spend each year as context an economy to business upgrade between London and Helsinki will cost you one voucher an upgrade for from Helsinki to Southeast Asia will cost you four upgrade vouchers you need reward
• 33:30 - 34:00 availability to be there for the upgrade to go through but there is a weight list if seats aren't immediately available it seems quite easy to use these vouchers but obviously reward availability is the key if you can be flexible about when you travel that will obviously help you greatly Platinum members get 12 upgrades a year which is enough for three upgrades on flights between Helsinki and Southeast Asia reward inventory permitting again but that sounds like a cracking benefit to me it's much more than ba gives you for an equivalent level of status the second benefit is
• 34:00 - 34:30 that there are Milestone rewards available as you progress through the tier points these include bonus avos avos not tier points Lounge passes and extra upgrade vouchers so getting to platinum would actually give you 14 upgrade vouchers to use each year and finally Platinum members are able to gift a gold membership to somebody else once per year of membership so getting and retaining Platinum Status will give you the ability to maintain someone else at the Gold status and remember that's
• 34:30 - 35:00 the equivalent of ba silver ba does something similar at the Gold guest list level but there's nothing even remotely like it available in the ba scheme and it's another great benefit of pursuing status with th air that's enough there is more believe it or not but I think I'm going to roll a line here the bottom line is if you plan and execute a careful strategy you can get and retain Platinum Status which is One World Emerald through th a for about ,700 a year on average which sounds
• 35:00 - 35:30 pretty good for me thank you so much for watching please give this video a like it took a lot of work to make it and if you're still watching leave me a comment just say hi just say something to make me know that this has all been worthwhile Please Subscribe if you're new and patreon if you want to help more directly thanks again I'm going for a lie down I'll see you in the next one goodbye