OneWorld award availability HEL- KTT

[jukebox333]

I'm looking to take my family to visit Lapland late next year to burn up QFF Points I have harvested - will do the book-353-days-out thing - but the QFF award engine will only allow me to book the last leg HEL-RVN: KTT is not offered as a destination, although Finnair do fly into there.

Can anyone tell me if in general there is OneWorld award availability for 5 seats seats HEL-KTT in late November next year, so I can get a feel for whether it's worth paying the premium to call the QFF Booking centre rather than book online?

Landing in Kittila gets me 200km further North than Rovaniemi, and the connection with the incoming Asia-Europe flights is nowhere near as tight (the HEL-RVN flights leave 65 mintes after the Finnair HKG/SIN-HEL flights land which is tight, but do-able as I understand it - esp. as there is no airline swap involved)

Thanks!

 

[drron]

Ay only has until October 2012 available on their site-so it looks like 330 days out just like AA.

 

[jukebox333]

Hmmm.. when I look today, using random dates to make it work, I'm seeing seats as far ahead as 18th November 2012:

 

[drron]

But I was looking on the Finnair site.As KTT does not appear on the QF drop down you may have to ring.

 

[casanovawa]

Its free to ring up and ask anyway isn't it, you only start getting charged if you proceed...

There are that many OW destinations that don't appear on that coughpy QF booking engine, so anything other than pretty basic itineraries will usually end up costing you some assistance fee unfortuantely...

 

[drmikki]

Out of interest, jukebox333, did you manage to get the KTT flight with QF? We spent Christmas in Luosto, flying into/out of Rovaniemi - its about midway between KTT and RVN airports and there's a bus to flights. It was absolutely fabulous and should thoroughly be recommended. November might be a bit early though for the true experience - the Aurora is best around January and this year it was really 'hot' in December- as in -10- +1 instead of -40 - -30, and the snow was late. When I was in Helsinki and Stockholm before/after Xmas there was no snow on the ground at all which was very unseasonal! I believe the first snow in much of the southern Arctic circle (Kittila/Luosto/Rovaniemi) wasn't until the beginning of December, at least according to our guides!

I guess there's no way of predicting the weather when you go, but I'd aim for Dec/Jan if you have any flexibility. My mother is already planning to go there for Xmas this year... what it cost to get there we saved in stress from family Xmas gatherings and instead of exchanging unnecessary presents between 4 adults we spent the $$ on skiiing, snowmobiliing etc instead. Oh, and if you can book with a tour company I would - they provide the snow suits, shoes, gloves etc that you'll need for the weather - it's hard and expensive to buy the right stuff here and it takes up a lot of luggage!

 

[jukebox333]

Hi drmikki;

No, didn't the flights, but no fault of QF. We'll be away for three weeks, and so I needed to hold on until the last flights (HKG-PER) opened up. This was due to happen on a Monday a few weeks back. On the Friday, I called the QFF call centre, and asked about availability HEL-KTT on the day I wanted - the week before Xmas - and was told there were 7 seats available. All good. On the day, I waited until 9am my time, when I was able to see CX had released the seats, and made the call. Only 2 seats were left - needed 5 - and even then, I couldnt get out of KTT on the day I wanted either.

Full credit to the girl I was on the line with, she spent quite a bit of time trying different flight and city combinations and dates, but it was not coming together. I asked her if she could keep looking while I used the online booking tool, and while she did, I was able to book 5 classic award whY seats PER-SIN-xHEL-RVN-xHEL-xPEK-HKG-PER for 650,000 points, no booking fees. So I grabbed those and thanked her very much for trying to help.

So the plan now will be to hire a car from RVN for the 10 days we are in Finland, as we're staying near Kittila, and the cost of the bus fare x5 versus the extra for a car makes it a worthwhile spend. The goal is a white christmas, and that's a sure thing 200km north of the Arctic Circle - the Aurora is on my bucket list, but even with 10 day there an the "sunspot cycle" at a 13 year high, there's no guarantees, so I'm hopeful but pragmatic.

Sounds like you had fun; I will endeavour to do a trip report when I get back, as the people we have dealt with in Finland have been brilliant, and with the Euro so high, it has been not obscenely expensive to do.

As an aside, I couldn't get FF flights out of PER in mid December to SIN, so booked the outbound for July, and brought cheap SIN-PER-SIN seats that were on sale for ~$650, that allowed me to "return" to SIN on the exact flight I wanted in Dec. So now we get to surprise the kids with a long weekend in SIN mid year. If not for AFF would never have thought to do that, and would have bought coughpy expensive one-way PER-SIN flights on the date we needed, and blown the same amount of QFF points going SIN-RVN-HKG-PER.

Of course, my AMEX has gone into meltdown, but then again, you're a long time dead, right?