After British Airways and Turkish Airlines (since 2024), another European airline is adding flights to Australia. Oneworld member Finnair announced this week that it will operate daily flights to Melbourne. These will start in October 2026 and will be operated with a layover in Bangkok.
Finnair already flies from Bangkok and Singapore to Sydney with Airbus A330 aircraft. However, these flights are operated as a wet lease for Qantas and not as Finnair flights. In the meantime, these aircraft even wear Qantas livery.
Flight schedule
The long-haul flight from Helsinki departs (like many other Asia routes) around midnight. After about 11 hours in the air, the aircraft reaches Bangkok Airport, where it remains on the ground for just under two hours. After a further 9 hours of flight time, Melbourne is reached. In total, the journey takes around 22 hours outbound and about 24 hours on the return.
Here is the schedule for the individual segments:
- Helsinki – Bangkok – Melbourne:
- AY 145 Helsinki HEL – Bangkok BKK: 00:10 – 16:30
- AY 145 Bangkok BKK – Melbourne MEL: 18:15 – 07:15 (+1)
- Melbourne – Bangkok – Helsinki:
- AY 146 Melbourne MEL – Bangkok BKK: 15:35 – 20:45
- AY 146 Bangkok BKK – Helsinki HEL: 22:30 – 06:05 (+1)
Finnair has fifth-freedom rights on the Bangkok–Melbourne route and can therefore also sell tickets for this sector alone. Passengers booked on the full route will likely also have to briefly leave the aircraft in Bangkok.
An Airbus A350-900 will be used on the route. On board there are 30 seats in Business Class, 26 in Premium Economy, and 265 in Economy Class. At least for now, Finnair is therefore not using the more premium-heavy configuration with an even larger Business Class cabin.
In Business Class, Finnair offers the well-known AirLounge seat without a recline function but with a high level of sleeping comfort. I’m still not a big fan of it, especially for such a long flight where you’ll spend several hours sitting upright. Other passengers, however, like it more. Here’s my review:
Award flight prices & upgrades
The route was announced yesterday, and from today flights should already be bookable on Finnair.com. More interesting, however, is the question of award flights and upgrades.
Unfortunately, the answer is somewhat disappointing. Award flights and upgrades are twice as expensive as a regular long-haul flight. In other words, they cost the same as booking the Helsinki–Bangkok and Bangkok–Melbourne segments separately.
An award flight from Helsinki to Melbourne therefore costs:
- Economy Class: 60,000 Avios + €78
- Premium Economy: 87,000 Avios + €98
- Business Class: 125,000 Avios + €153
Alternatively, booking via the British Airways Club is possible. The required mileage is the same there, but the surcharges are slightly lower. On the other hand, with Finnair you can (in theory) add a feeder flight from, for example, Copenhagen almost for free, which is not possible with BA.
At the moment, there is still an error on the Finnair website showing only 62,500 miles for a one-way Business Class flight. Unfortunately, bookings at this price do not go through and only result in an error message.
Upgrades with Avios or upgrade vouchers are also possible and cost:
- Economy → Premium Economy: 34,000 Avios or 4 upgrade vouchers
- Premium Economy → Business Class: 46,000 Avios or 6 upgrade vouchers
- Economy → Business Class: 80,000 Avios or 8 upgrade vouchers
Anyone looking to book an award flight in Business Class should instead consider flights with Qatar Airways. These start at around 90,000 Avios + €300 in Business Class, without the need to travel to Finland first, but with rather limited availability.
Source : Press release by Finnair
Translated by Ditmar
Cover Picture: Photo by Dmitry Osipenko on Unsplash