Finnair is giving you up to 40% off when you buy Avios, making it cheaper than last month's 50% bonus
- Sam
- 4 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Finnair has launched another buy Avios sale, with discounts of up to 40%, running from 15 to 18 June 2026. Last month they ran a sale which reached 50%, so at first glance this one looks worse.
It isn't. Last month was a bonus, where you pay full price and get extra Avios on top. This one is a discount, where you just pay less for the same Avios. And a 40% discount beats a 50% bonus. Sounds like a terrible game of rock, paper, scissors.
What's on offer
You'll need to buy at least 5,000 Avios to get anything at all, and from there the discount goes up the more you buy:
Avios purchased | Discount |
5,000 – 19,000 | 25% |
20,000 – 49,000 | 30% |
50,000 – 84,000 | 35% |
85,000 or more | 40% |
Whatever you buy goes into your Finnair Plus account, and from there you can shift it across to your BA account for free and instantly via the Avios website.
What it actually costs
I don't want to bore you with too much maths, but here's why the discount wins.
A 50% bonus gives you one and a half Avios for the price of one, which is only a third off really. A 40% discount is 40% off. So the sale with the smaller number is the cheaper one, as funny as that sounds.
Another thing is that Finnair prices the sale separately in each currency, and they don't all match up.
You'll see the dropdown to change currency at the top of the screen. It'll say "*All transactions are made in euros regardless of the currency selected.". Not true. I tested this out and was charged in the currency that I had selected at the time.
Buying 85,000 Avios (where the 40% discount kicks in) in pounds came to £933.20, or about 1.10p an Avios.
Switch the checkout to Japanese yen and it's nearer 0.97p. So if you've got a card that doesn't charge for foreign transactions, you could save about £100 if you were to buy 85,000 Avios.
The fiddly bits
The sale is open to Finnair Plus members who joined before 12 June 2026 and have at least 50 Avios sitting in the account. If you've only ever had a BA Club account, then opening a Finnair Plus one today won't get you in, because funnily enough, 12 June has already been and gone.
A couple of practical things if you do qualify. You need to log in to Finnair to see the prices and buy, and the option to change currency sits at the top of the buy screen, which is where you go for the yen trick. It'll also say that the Avios you buy also take one to three days to show up, but mine showed up instantly in my test purchase.
The takeaway
If you've got a redemption in mind and were going to top up anyway, then this is a good moment to do it, better than last month whatever the headline says, and pay in yen on a fee-free card and that should save you even more money.
There is also one thing I would do regardless, and it has nothing to do with buying anything now. Get a Finnair Plus account set up with 50 Avios in it, ready for next time, as this seems to be the consistent barrier to taking part in Finnair's Avios sales.
Sam
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