How to leverage Finnair for cheaper transfers
If you need to move points between two British Airways accounts, you can do it but for a price. There’s a £50 fee, and you can move up to 60,000 points. You can repeat this process (and pay another £50) up to a maximum of 200,000 points per year in total.
Why would you want to transfer points?
British Airways allows you to connect accounts together under a Household account. This is a great way to pool points between people who live in the same household. I’ve been part of a household with my wife for many years, and it simply means that the points we earn and then spend all sit in the same bucket. Since we’re highly likely to be travelling together, this makes sense.
There may be situations where you do not want to share your points pool with someone else. It could be that you want to help a friend out and gift them some Avios points.
You may even want to give points to a child, but without bringing them into your household account. That’s where transfers come in.
I wrote a much longer article on how to transfer Avios points if you have a British Airways account. The official Avios.com method, which costs £50 to transfer up to 60,000 points at a time, is actually a much better version of what BA had previously. Before they launched this new approach, you would pay a much higher fee, based on the points you wanted to move.
If you are BA Gold or higher, then you pay no fee. If you have that level of status, then this advice is moot.
How do you leverage Finnair?
Finnair use Avios as their loyalty currency. You can freely move any number of points between the airlines that use Avios: BA, Iberia, Finnair, Qatar, Vueling, Aer Lingus and Loganair. This is not a list of the airlines you can book using Avios. That is much wider, due to the partnerships that each Avios-using airline has.
What makes Finnair interesting is that you can move Avios points between Finnair accounts for £8.57 (€10). That means you could move Avios to a Finnair account, transfer it to another Finnair account, and then those points are moveable to BA, Qatar, Iberia et al.
The only roadblock is that the sending account, the one that is transferring the Avios to someone else, must have been opened for ninety days. It is absolutely worth opening an account with every Avios-using airline. You never know when you will want to leverage it for a flight, or in this case for a transfer.
There are no obvious limits for these transfers. I say “obvious” because there are no T&Cs on the page, other than the 90-day account rule. There is a dedicated transfer page on Finnair to facilitate the move.
Step-by-step guide to transferring Avios using Finnair
- Make sure you both have a Finnair Plus account. They are free to open.
- Move the Avios from your BA account to your Finnair account.
- Visit the dedicated Finnair transfer page
- Enter the Finnair Plus membership number (not the email) of the person you want to transfer your points to.
- Cick “Add to cart” and complete the payment process
Is this worth it?
Yes, if you need to transfer points, then saving over £40 is worth it. If you’re transferring over 60,000 points, then the saving will be higher. It’s a very simple way to bypass a surcharge, but it’s also a useful way to get around the 60k/200k transfer limit.
There is a risk attached: what if you get the Finnair Plus account number wrong, and you end up sending points to a random person? As long as you’re extra careful and triple-check the number, then you should be fine.
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