Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Finnair restricts Avios flight reward bookings in business class

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One Mile at a Time is reporting that Finnair has started to block its business class availability for partner airline award redemptions beyond 60 days in advance.

This means you will no longer be able to book Avios tickets on Finnair as soon as flights are released. Other oneworld and Finnair partners face the same restrictions.

Whilst this is annoying, Finnair is not the first airline to do so. Lufthansa, SWISS and Singapore all restrict First Class availability to their top frequent flyer members up until a few weeks before departure (or, in the case of SWISS, never offer it at all).

Finnair A350

It looks like Finnair may be limiting availability for all but its top tier Platinum and Platinum Lumos members.  Unfortunately there is no formal announcement of these changes that clarify the exact restrictions that have been imposed.

Economy does not appear to be affected by this change – these appear available beyond 60 days in advance.

Here is an example – Helsinki to London is available for 22nd March in Business Class:

Finnair Avios availability

…… but not 23rd March, or any day thereafter:

Finnair Avios availability


How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

Nectar American Express

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

American Express Platinum card Amex

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express card

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Comments (213)

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

  • Adam says:

    OT regarding Virgin Atlantic Rewards+ CC. Do you get the upgrade or 2-for-1 voucher immediately after you spend 10.000 or on the anniversary date (like IHG Creation)? If on anniversary date is there a way to bag it and close the account without the fee for the upcoming year?

    • Grant says:

      It arrvies as soon as you meet the spend requirements.

    • Craig says:

      I though I’d got my calculations wrong and put £500 extra spend through the card, it turns out I didn’t need to because the voucher appeared about a week after the points for the relevant statement.

  • Boi says:

    OT: if the Amex IT Gods align for you is it usually just for 1 card or for all cards? Hubby Just had bonus 26K on BAPP after cancelling one in July.Now wondering if its worth him trying SPG which he cancelled at same time

    • Shoestring says:

      SPG is still only £1000 spend requirement —> going up to £3K

      reason enough to go for it without delay

      • Neil Donoghue says:

        I got the SPG card yesterday after not having held the card for 2 years. My online account is showing the bonus if I spend £1,000 so it was worth the random application.

    • Anna says:

      We’ve had an extra, erroneous sign up bonus on SPG, but didn’t get one on BA blue.

  • Tony says:

    Man alive, IHG would have to give me 50,000 points to see Morrissey.

  • Frankie says:

    OT. Does anyone know what the start and end date was for the BA amex avios offer of spend £4 and get a bonus avios? I’ve only had a trickle of avios and want to work out how many I’m owed. But I don’t know when the offer started and ended. And it WAS an extra avios for each multiple of £4 wasn’t it? Not each transaction over £4? The T&Cs weren’t clear but I’m sure I read that Rob check with Amex and it was the former. Thanks in advance

    • Rob says:

      Amex confirmed to me it was the former but if you call the agents seem to read back the original script which implies, due to bad drafting, it was the latter.

    • MarkZ says:

      Here’s the best I can do. It started sometime after 5th December 2019, and ended on the 27th. Your Amex statement will show a breakdown of the extra Avios awarded as “AviosOffer” entries, but you will have to try and match those entries against the individual transactions to see if you have received your full entitlement. Depending on your statement date, the extra Avios could span two statements. Finally, it was 1 bonus Avios for every £4, so 1 for £4, 1 for £7.99, 2 for £8, etc. Hope this helps.

      • Stu_N says:

        Definitely £1 for every full £4 spent. I had a couple of large transactions in the period, £800 gave a BonusAvios entry of 200 a few weeks later.

    • AJA says:

      MarkZ got the dates correct 5 – 27 Dec as that was my experience too. It is definitely 1 bonus Avios for every £4 spent rounded down. My last bonus of 16 Avios posted on to my Avios tab on the Amex account on 15 Jan 2020 for a spend of £65 on 17 Dec 2019 although I did also get 3 Avios posting to my account on 1 Jan 2020 for spend on 27 Dec 2019 and 74 Avios posting on 10 Jan 2020 for spend of £297 on 23 Dec 2019. The larger the spend the more random the posting date. It shows up as Amex Offers. I have received all the bonus Avios I was expecting.

  • LST says:

    Hi all,

    OT, but needed some advice re my card collection strategy going forwards.

    I currently have Amex SPG, HSBC prem rewards and Amex gold.

    The SPG was my primary card as hotel points are more useful for a young family and I have a decent balance built up (600k) but this is already ear marked for some redemptions next year.

    I started collecting Avios pre Christmas as the Christmas shopping racked up a huge number of points via the portal – as part of that I upgraded the HSBC card to take advantage of the higher earn rate and the welcome bonus. The avios is just a sideline and some extra points for not doing much, but I suspect I will apply for BAPP and 2-4-1 at some stage, to get good value.

    I am just about to get the annual bonus on the gold and need to decide what to do next. I will keep the HSBC card for the next 10 months to pick up the 12 month bonus (the kid’s school accepts MasterCard/visa credit cards 😊) but will probably downgrade at that point and maybe look at another Mastercard/Visa with a better earn rate.

    Just wanted some advice, should I keep the gold (2.5 Bonvoy per £ when the annual bonus is included, but annual fee of £140), keep the gold and the SPG (with its lower earn rate, but lower annual fee and gold status) or do something different?

    The IHG offering looks good, but I am concerned that creation don’t have the best reputation and would say £30k be better spent on SPG/Gold/IHG to get the most bang for my buck/points?

    We are about to renovate our house so there is a lot of spending on the horizon in the next 12-18 months and I would like to try to get this decision right!

    I don’t do manufactured spend and don’t want to pay HMRC via some convoluted fashion or incurring a fee that may be more than the cost of the points themselves, so not worried about that side of things.

    Sorry for the long, rambling, post!

    Thanks in advance

    LST

  • DK says:

    OT re ANA redemptions through virgin. Are mixed cabin redemptions possible? J one way, F the other? Couldn’t see anything on the virgin site about it

  • junana lumaley says:

    in light of rev top ups being coded as cash advances.
    what about paying for business services using all your cards in one?

    • jc says:

      There might be one code too many in here. Which business services…! See yesterday’s article & comments?

      • junana lumaley says:

        not HMRC. business services about 47 miles south of London as the crow (or rather, seagull?) flies

  • Sam says:

    Any recommendations for hotels in Valencia?

    I’m there for a week on a semi-work trip in March, but taking the wife and baby.

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.