Alaska Adds Finnair as New Partner Across the Atlantic

by Gary Leff

oneworld member (and American Airlines partner) Finnair has just been announced as a new Alaska Airlines partner.


Helsinki, credit: Alaska Airlines

Alaska Airlines is certainly creative in its partnerships, working with many members of both SkyTeam and oneworld alliances as well as airlines outside of any alliance like Emirates, Icelandair and Hainan Airlines.

Finnair flies to Helsinki from Chicago, New York JFK, and Miami and is inaugurating San Francisco service June 1 with three times weekly summer service through September 28.

You can now credit Finnair flights to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, but it’s not great for economy trips on Finnair because most economy fares earn less than 100% of flown miles.

You cannot yet redeem Alaska Airlines miles for travel on Finnair, but that will come this fall.

Finnair is an American Airlines joint venture partner across the Atlantic, and in theory their awards are searchable at AA.com but a long-standing problem is that the American Airlines website shows phantom award space for Finnair. You’re better off searching BA.com for awards, although once redemption with Alaska miles goes live I imagine Mileage Plan may make seats searchable on their own site.

We don’t yet know what awards will be available on Finnair via Alaska, or what they will cost, but Helsinki is a great connecting point for both Europe and Asia.

(HT: fishywang)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Here’s hoping Alaska will have the magic to reduce the massive surcharges on their awards we see with their other partners? I would like to fly them more but poor award availability for what I search and surcharges ways more than I can stomach put them off my list.

  3. I just wish Alaska would add availability to saver space to all Partner flights. Currently it’s such a hodgepodge that unless your based on west coast usa it’s tricky to use their miles in an effective way (I wanted to fly JAL from Europe to asia for example and no luck, wanted to fly emirates from Mid East to asia no luck etc etc)

  4. @Stefan Krasowski – Alaska only adds surcharges to BA awards, and AA doesn’t add surcharges to Finnair awards, so if I were to *guess* Alaska won’t collect YQ. We’ll see!

  5. To Europe, there’s fuel surcharges on award tickets on Icelandair as well.

    I hope that it’s “zero” on AY!

  6. Has anyone ever been able to book an AY flight using AA miles from/to US to/from Europe? I really do want to fly AY but have yet to find any “real” space.

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