How to Buy & Redeem Finnair Plus Avios

Finnair Plus is the loyalty program of Oneworld member Finnair. In 2024, the program adopted Avios, which is the common currency of six airlines including British Airways, Qatar Airways and Iberia.

Buying Avios can be a clever way to access cheaper flights, including in Business Class.

Although you can also purchase Avios from other airlines that use them, such as British Airways, it could make sense to buy Avios from Finnair Plus when it has a good promotion running. You could then redeem your Avios directly through Finnair Plus for flights on Finnair or other Oneworld partners.

As it happens, using Finnair Plus Avios is also currently the only way to redeem points for Finnair Premium Economy… at least, until Qantas opens these redemptions in late 2025. Finnair Plus even guarantees a minimum number of award seats on every Finnair flight for its own members.

Alternatively, you could transfer your Finnair Plus Avios to your British Airways Club account at a 1:1 rate. This opens up more options, particularly as British Airways has different partner airlines and charges different amounts of Avios than Finnair when redeeming for reward flights.

How to buy Finnair Avios

You can purchase or gift Finnair Plus Avios on the Finnair website.

The minimum purchase is 1,000 Avios, and you can purchase in increments of 1,000 Avios. The maximum purchase limit is 200,000 Avios before any bonuses.

Finnair charges EUR27 (~AU$45) for the lowest amount of 1,000 Avios. However, this price gets cheaper as you purchase more. Buying 100,000 Avios or more in one transaction (before bonuses) will get you the best price, at EUR21 (~AU$35) per 1,000 Avios.

Note that Finnair Avios expire after 18 months of inactivity in your Finnair Plus account. However, transferring Avios from one “flavour” to another counts as activity.

You can sign up for Finnair Plus on the Finnair Plus website and it’s free to join the program. However, you will have to enable two-factor authentication to transfer Avios to and from Finnair.

Special deals on buying Finnair Avios

Since adopting Avios, Finnair has run promotions on buying Avios every 2-3 months.

The most recent offer launched on 19 February 2025. Until 23 February 2025, you can get up to a 40% bonus when buying at least 100,000 Finnair Avios. From 23 February until 5 March 2025, you can get up to a 30% bonus when purchasing 100,000 or more Finnair Avios.

This is not as good as the previous offer from Finnair, which was up to a 50% discount (worth roughly the same as a 100% bonus).

The current promotion is structured with the following discounts:

• Buy 6,000-10,000 Avios and get a 30% bonus (down to 20% from 23 February)
• Buy 11,000-99,000 Avios and get a 35% bonus (down to 25% from 23 February)
• Buy 100,000-200,000 Avios and get a 40% bonus (down to 30% from 23 February)

If you bought the maximum of 200,000 Finnair Avios by 23 February (which gets you 280,000 Avios after the 40% bonus), you would be paying EUR15 (~AU$25) per 1,000 Avios. For context, with a 50% discount you would be buying Finnair Avios for EUR10.50 per 1,000 (~AU$17).

Note that to buy Finnair Avios with a bonus during this promotion, you must have had a Finnair Plus account prior to 5 February 2025. You’ll also need at least 500 Avios in your account.

If you’re not already a Finnair Plus member, sign up now to avoid missing out on future promotions.

Finnair also sometimes applies a targeted bonus to your account. However, you may not receive any notification about an offer that’s exclusive to you. You’ll have to check periodically for these on the “buy points” page.

Converting Amex Membership Rewards points to Avios

If you have an Australian credit card that earns American Express Membership Rewards points, you can get Finnair Avios without needing to buy them – albeit in a roundabout way.

You could first convert your Amex points to Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios, and then transfer those Avios into your British Airways Club account. Then, you could transfer those Avios from British Airways to Finnair.

This is also a simple way to get a small amount of Finnair Avios into your account, in order to take advantage of the current promotion.

Redeeming Finnair Avios

You can redeem Finnair Avios via the Finnair website. As Finnair is part of the Oneworld alliance, you can redeem on the following Oneworld member airlines:

Finnair also allows redemptions on LATAM Airline, which is not in Oneworld.

Finnair Plus award prices are based on region-based award charts, with seperate charts for each airline. The airline publishes Avios rates for its own flights separately.

The best value with Finnair Avios is redeeming for Finnair flights. Finnair prices these below the equivalent Avios rates on British Airways or Qatar Airways, and other programs like Qantas Frequent Flyer.

You can add on a free extra flight if you’re starting or ending your travel in Northern Europe or Finland. For example, flying from Helsinki-Singapore in Finnair Business Class is the same price as flying Stockholm-Helsinki-Singapore, at 62,500 Finnair Avios.

Finnair does apply carrier charges on its own metal, although these are mild. The highest charge is on flights to Japan, Singapore and Los Angeles in Business Class, with EUR120 (~AU$198) added on to other taxes and fees.

Redemptions on Finnair partners are not as competitive, especially for long-haul flights. However, due to the region-based chart, there are some sweet spots.

For example, Finnair prices Australia-New Zealand flights on Qantas at the same 13,000 Avios for Economy and 22,500 for Business Class, including any connections. This means that a Perth-Brisbane-Auckland Business Class award ticket only costs 22,500 Avios, while Qantas charges 68,400 points for the same route!

The same pricing also applies to domestic Australian routes. However, Finnair Plus adds rather high carrier charges when redeeming Avios for Qantas flights.

Other sweet spots include Japan Airlines First Class on Singapore-Tokyo for 53,000 Avios, or Hawaii-North America in Alaska Airlines Economy Class for 13,500 Avios.

You can check out the full list of partner award charts on the Finnair website.

Remember that Finnair is part of the Avios network. So, you can transfer to other airlines that use Avios if they offer a better price on a Oneworld partner redemption you want to book. For example, you can usually get better value when booking Qatar Airways flights using British Airways or Qatar Airways Avios.

Want to learn more about buying points for cheap premium cabin flights?

The Australian Frequent Flyer Training includes a comprehensive course on buying points for cheap premium travel. This course covers the most useful programs for Australians, including the Avios network.

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Wilson McTaggart

Wilson's love of travel started from a young age, but his love for points developed after figuring out ways to travel on a gap year for less - leading naturally towards Australian Frequent Flyer! Wilson's hobbies include skiing, cricket and planning trips, both with and without points.

Wilson posts on the AFF forum as @WilsonM.