You know times are tough in the airline business when carriers start trying to entice travelers with boob jobs, hair replacement surgery and face lifts! Free flights, hotel rooms and magazine subscriptions obviously don’t cut it anymore with bargain hungry passengers.

Now, Finnair, Finland’s biggest airline, has come up with a whole new idea for attracting frequent flyers: Free plastic surgery in exchange for air miles. Breast implants, hair replacement surgery or a face-lift performed by the Nordstroem Hospital in Helsinki are among the newest offerings in the carrier’s Finnair Plus loyalty service.

Here at Bellyache Central, we were sorely tempted to sneer at this vanitytapping commercial device as yet another crass marketing scheme confirming that compared to the cargo business, the passenger side really is ‘plastic’. But you know, we’ve had second thoughts. Maybe those eager marketing boys over on the selfloading cargo side of the business have really come up with a winner this time.

After all, we know a few people in the cargo world that could use a nip here, a tuck there (and there and there and there!) a bit more hair atop the old pate and perhaps a few less wrinkles (especially after this last year). So, how about linking the concept to revenue tonne kilometres, after all, American Airlines is already tapping a similar concept by awarding frequent flier points for cargo bookings. In this case, book enough cargo from Boston to Beijing and you get a free Botox shot. And this way we wouldn’t have to touch up those photos you send us to run in our ‘People’ section of the magazine!

Oh, and just in case you are wondering, the 3.18 million points required for a boob job would require 120 round-trip, business-class flights between Helsinki and New York, according to a points calculator on Finnair’s web site. Ouch, that’s enough to make anybody’s boobs sag.