We talked about Iberia’s ludicrous promotion recently, where you could get Oneworld elite status in just a few flights. It turns out that Finnair thinks that a good idea too!
The promotion link is here. Basically:
- You need to purchase any ticket between 7th July and 7th August
- And fly between 8th July and 30th September
- You earn double award points and tier points
- Only Finnair operated and coded flights are eligible
Compared to Iberia’s quadruple offer, it doesn’t look as good in the first place. However the advantage is that award points are doubled too, which you can use to redeem for flights or upgrades.
Let’s focus on how you can move up your tier. The number of tier points you earn depends your destination zone and the fare bucket your ticket is in. All fares in business class earn the same tier points, but economy class has three different buckets. We will just look at Economy Classic here, which is a discounted fare with check-in allowance.
| Northern Europe | Europe | Asia & North America | |
| Economy Classic | 1,000 | 2,000 | 8,000 |
| Business | 2,000 | 4,000 | 16,000 |
Note that “Northern Europe” includes Iceland, Poland and Russia. “Europe” includes Israel and UAE. You could use the official calculator to check how many points you can earn for an itinerary.
And here is the requirement for each membership tier (excluding the top level Platinum Lumo):
- Silver (Ruby): 30,000 points
- Gold (Sapphire): 80,000 points
- Platinum (Emerald): 150,000 points
The obvious sweet spot is long-haul flights. A return in Economy Classic earns you 32,000 tier points under this promotion, which qualifies you for Silver already. To be fair Oneworld Ruby doesn’t come with a lot of benefits – priority check-in / boarding, seat selection, and maybe additional baggage with some airlines. However, it is a very easy way to achieve it, at the cost of only a few hundred pounds.
To reach Gold, you’ll need to depart from an European city (London for example), transit in Helsinki for Asia or North America, all in business class – this sums up to exactly 80,000 points. Although not the cheapest option, it is again probably the simplest to execute. By contrast, the “classic” BAEC option would be fly from UK/Europe to Asia with Qatar Airways plus four BA segments.
The more realistic option though, is probably flying within Europe. Unfortunately there’s no great deal here, as two business class returns only amount to Ruby, which isn’t much to get excited for. Also London – Helsinki has always been an expensive route on Finnair in business class. Given the position of Helsinki, it’s tricky to transit there for any other European destinations.
In summary, if you travel on budget, and happen to have a plan to visit Asia or North America by September, it could be a nice way to pick up the Oneworld Ruby status.
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