Back to the UK on Finnair!

Hi everyone!  Krister and I had a nice trip to Finland. I spent most of the time sitting outside in the sun and the rest of the time working from home, so not a bad trip overall.  But alas, it was time to return to the UK and resume normal(ish) life.  Learning from last time, I put Krister on the upgrade waitlist for this flight, and unsurprisingly, it cleared when check-in opened.

At the time, Finnair was offering 2 flights per week to Manchester on an E190 aircraft (operated by Norra) at 8:20 am.  Pre-pandemic, there were 2 flights per day (morning and afternoon) and E190s and A319/A320s could be found on the route.  According to their website, in August the flight will happen 5 times a week, increasing to daily in September (and switching to the afternoon/early evening slot)  This was my first Norra E190 flight since 2018 and my first in business class.  Although, Krister flew on a Norra E190 in business class earlier this year. 

Finnair sent us a text 48 hours before our flight to alert us to fill out the online form for arrivals into the UK.  Since Finland is on the list of countries exempt from the arrivals quarantine and we live in the UK, the form was easy to fill out. 

Upon arrival to the airport, we went to the Finnair Platinum/Oneworld Emerald check-in desk (which has actually moved, presumably due to the pandemic).  Masks were required to be worn by travelers, and there was good compliance with the rule, but a few people still didn’t have their noses covered… There was one, centralized security line and no priority security line.  There were of course many fewer people travelling than normal, but the security line was remarkably long (even taking into consideration how well-spaced the line was).  The line at Heathrow the previous week was much short, which is odd, but is a sign of the times.  The security process though was extremely efficient, as I’ve come to expect from Finland.

Upon clearing security, Krister and I proceeded to the Finnair Schengen lounge, which had reopened a few weeks prior with reduced offerings and opening hours.  There were no signs limiting where one could sit, however.  The buffet’s food spread was pretty typical for a Finnish breakfast: yogurt and granola, karelian pies and bread, and cold cuts of meat and cheese.  Krister had the yogurt and granola, and I had the continental breakfast.

The departure screen showed the entirety of the flights scheduled for today, and Krister and I only counted about 5 non-Schengen flights, including the 2 flights to London and ours to Manchester.  It makes sense why the Schengen lounge is open but not the non-Schengen lounge, but the non-Schengen lounges are nicer (and Krister’s Oneworld emerald status would’ve gotten us into the Finnair Platinum lounge if it had been open).

                Once we finished our light breakfast, we went through passport control and headed to our gate.  Helsinki airport has now finished its internal upgrade, which means the new people movers are operational!  Completely unnecessary given how empty it was but fun, nonetheless.

Helsinki airport has a lot of glass, so we were afforded some nice views of Finnair’s fleet (and we got to see even more during takeoff!).  Probably in total, we saw about half of Finnair’s fleet just parked.

With Finnair doing back to front boarding to minimize movement, Krister and I were among the last to board.  I think getting business class on this flight was worth it for the peace of mind because every other seat was blocked off (which is not the case during normal times).  This meant business class was in a “1-1” configuration (since E190s have a 2-2 configuration by default).  Although, having looked at the seat map, I think the plane was only around half full, so most people had a set of 2 seats to themselves.  I was originally assigned to seat 3A, but like on the previous flight, business class was mostly empty, so I asked to move up to seat 1A.  

Interestingly, on this flight, instead of being given a full ‘clean kit’, I was only given a wet wipe.  I think that’s because this was a Norra flight and not a full Finnair flight.  And this is probably one of the longer flights that Norra flies.  The first row of these aircraft has really good legroom.  The rest of the rows are just normal, but Finnair does generally have better legroom than British Airways, for example, for the normal seats.

Boarding was as efficient as expected for a European carrier (despite back to front being the slowest method of boarding), and we were ready to push back a few minutes early.  Upon departure, we were treated to some more nice views of more parked Finnair planes, and then a nice view of the Åland archipelago. 

About 20 minutes after take-off, the meal service began.  I am always listed as having the seafood meal (as a way to guarantee I won’t be served beef).  Despite this being breakfast, I still got a special meal, but didn’t actually get served any seafood.  Krister had the regular meal (but didn’t take any pictures).  He got served an omelet instead of scrambled eggs, and I think the sausage here was vegetarian, but it might have been pork; I didn’t ask since it wasn’t a problem for me.  Like on the previous flight, the food was served with all the covers still on.  The service was polite and efficient but minimal, due to the pandemic.  Unless something really were to be off, I couldn’t fault the flight attendants for anything.

No complaints about the food, but I don’t really know what the white stuff served with the cheese was.  The main dish was well-spiced, but breakfasts aren’t really my thing.  Krister liked his omelet a lot though and is very into breakfast.

While Finnair’s main aircraft all have WiFi installed, the Norra aircraft do not, which was a bummer because I would have liked to have been able to use Google docs during the flight.  Similarly, there is no inflight power, so my laptop time was limited anyway. 

We touched down into Manchester a bit early, after about 2:30 in flight.  We had no trouble clearing passport control, since we had filled out the appropriate forms beforehand.  The “priority” bag tags didn’t seem to work very well this time; our bags were about halfway through the process.

In summary, this 2.5-hour Norra flight went quite smoothly.  The Schengen lounge was decent and not that different from pre-pandemic times (3/5).  I’m not really a big fan of breakfasts (3/5), but Krister is (4/5).  No complaints about the service (5/5), and the blocked off seat and additional leg room made this a great European business class seat (5/5).  The lack of WiFi was a bummer (0/5).  Overall, the flight gets a 16 – 17 /25, which is pretty good for a regional business class but a bit low for other Finnair flights.