Alaska Airlines announced on this week that it is forming a new partnership with Finnair, the largest airline and the flag carrier in Finland. This new partnership comes less than three months after Alaska added Germany’s Condor as a MileagePlan partner.
Finnair is a member of the Oneworld airline alliance. From its main hub Helsinki airport, Finnair currently flies to three cities in the U.S.: daily service to New York City, three weekly service to Miami, and five weekly service to Chicago during the summer. On June 1, 2017, Finnair will launch its first West Coast service to Alaska’s new San Francisco hub, with service on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays from June to the end of September.
I looked up Finnair’s long-haul business class offering and it looks fabulous. You can learn more about it here. Its full-flat seats certainly beat the angled-flat seats offered by Alaska’s German partner Condor.
Finnair Business Class cabin, as shown on Finnair website
MileagePlan members can start earning miles on Finnair flights and miles flown will count towards MileagePlan status. Redemption will be introduced at a later day. Below is the MileagePlan earning chart for flights operated by Finnair:
The Alaska-Finnair partnership is definitely a welcome addition. The partnership gives Alaska flyers, especially those living on the west coast, another option to Europe in addition to British Airways, Air France and Condor.
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The issue with FinnAir is that it is virtually impossible to book an American Airlines business award on FinnAir to/from Europe. The AA site is filled with phantom space, which disappears if you actually try to purchase the ticket. I have had better luck finding real space from Helskini to NRT. If the same thing happens on Alaska Air, then that would make me sad. I really do want to try the FinnAir product.
Yeah – I got excited when I saw lots of JFK-HEL space this summer as I’m looking for some business class seats to Europe this summer. But then it was not viewable on any other oneworld site and so I realized exactly what you said – that it’s completely phantom 🙁