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In an effort to attract customers and be contemporary in their rewards for frequent fliers, Finnish airline Finnair has partnered with a Helsinki hospital to offer breast implants, facelifts, and hair replacement surgeries as a art of their customer loyalty programs.

With the use of special deals and giveaways rampant in the competitive plastic surgery market, Finnair joins an every growing group of businesses who peddle plastic surgery as if it was just another over the counter remedy.

In a world competing for the attention of the consumer, Finnair has found a way pique people’s interest in their airline and get some free publicity just by offering the creative ways to use frequent flyer miles. Though frequent flyers can still exchange their miles for upgrades, free hotel rooms, or consumer products, the diversity of their customers requires diversity in their reward offers in order to keep people in the air. Finnair has capitalized on the recent interest in cosmetic surgery in the hope that it will attract a new group of flyers by offering the cosmetic procedures as part of the Finnair Plus Loyalty Service. A free breast augmentation can be earned with 3.18 million points, roughly 120 round trip business class flights between Helsinki and New York. The program was created by Finnair together with the Nordstroem Hospital in Helsinki. Mikko Tuomainen, the director of loyalty programs for the arline said: “The idea was to incorporate partners and services from all walks of life.” The airline would like to expand the program so that it is not limited to just cosmetic procedures and includes other types of health care as well.

Though flyers still primarily use their points for the traditional offerings of free flights and hotel rooms, the trend toward plastic surgery rewards is a very real one. It stirs interest in the airline and creates a casual feeling toward the procedures so that they are no longer seen as serious medical surgeries with risks and rates of failure. Though the 4,640,000 flyer miles required to get a free facelift might be enough to send some customers to Finnair, the publicity of the offer itself is definitely enough to get people talking.

A former British soldier living in Germany has won a settlement against her insurance company compelling them to give her free breast implants to complete her conversion into a male.

Formerly known as Private W.E. Smith, Sarah-Jane Smith sued the German health authority DAK claiming faulty hormone therapy caused her to grow deformed breasts. Claiming that her breasts “damaged her psychologically” Smith has insisted that the health care organization pay to have her breasts surgically altered. She has consulted with both psychologists and surgeons in order to gain advocates for her cause and new breast for her body.

The saga began in childhood, Smith claims that she always felt like a “woman trapped in a man’s body” and preferred playing with dolls to playing with more traditional little boy toys. Still striving to understand her sexuality, Smith joined the British Army and wore woman’s lingerie under her combat uniform. While stationed in Hanover, Germany, Smith married and fathered a daughter. When, after nineteen years of marriage her wife discovered the truth about Smith’s transsexual behavior, she filed for divorce which freed Smith up to pursue her dream of a sex change operation.

After successfully petitioning the health insurance system to pay for her gender change operation, she was disappointed to find out that the surgery approved by the health care system only covered the below the waist procedures. Her new breasts were to be created through hormone therapy but Smith became dissatisfied with her breasts seeing them as deformed and shapeless. She asked for breast augmentation surgery and was denied by DAK. A spokesperson for DAK stated: ‘the claim cannot be honored because the breasts do not show any signs of illness that requires treatment.”

Undaunted, Smith pursued her lawsuit and eventually won a settlement of 5,400 pounds, enough to pay for the surgery she desires. Smith was quoted as saying, “My life has become hell. I will not be a real woman without these breasts. They are vital to my overall completeness as a female and I don’t think it is unreasonable for the health authority to pay.” Smith has got both her wish and her new breasts and can now continue her journey as a woman in a woman’s body.