(Surprise trip) back to Finland… in two flights

I hadn’t expected to be writing another post so soon after my trip to the US.  However, life happens, and Krister and I needed to go to Finland for the holiday season.  When we went to book the trip, there were a couple of options, but all were rather expensive.  Initially, the flights on Saturday Dec 19^th were extremely expensive.  When we looked again the next day, Finnair had swapped out an E190 for an A321 and because the seat capacity doubled, the price had dropped considerably.  Krister booked his ticket to/from London directly with Finnair.  Since I needed to start from/return to Manchester, I wanted the direct flight to Helsinki, if possible, but there was no direct flight back to Manchester immediately after New Year’s.  Instead, I booked a ticket on British Airways via London.  This type of ticket used to be an option when BA had their own flight to Helsinki, but that stopped being possible when BA cancelled their route (permanently?) back in March.  This time, however, the website was showing a (comparatively) reasonably-priced return ticket via Helsinki.  Since we booked only 10 days in advance and since it’s the holiday period, the ticket price was over £500 in economy (which is nearly half what I paid for the return international business class flights in October).  In situations like this, I sometimes wish BA calculated award Avios from price, rather than from distance.  The way the tickets worked out (i.e. because of their price), the Finnair flights were considered “flexible economy” and the BA flights were “discount economy”.

There were a couple of unfortunate parts to this travel plan. 1- Taking two flights is generally worse than taking a single flight.  2- the Northern line train I got was one of the older ones with carriages in a 2-3 configuration.  3- I was flying from Manchester Airport, and the airport’s ground experience always has something to keep it interesting.  4- Since I was changing to a Finnair flight, I would be needing to change from terminal 5 to terminal 2 at Heathrow, which required going through security again. 

I arrived at Manchester airport about 90 minutes before the flight.  All flights have been moved into terminal 1, which I tend to prefer to terminal 3 anyway.  However, upon arrival, no check-in information was provided for the British Airways flight to London.  While waiting, I actually learned that I’d be a retro livery A319, which was exciting!

After waiting about 15 minutes (with just over an hour before the flight), I asked what was going on and where the BA check-in was.  The man I asked was around my age, and he actually escorted me to the BA check-in desks (which are downstairs).  At check-in, they could only print me the domestic boarding pass (on receipt paper) and not the second (Finnair) boarding pass because of my documents having to have been approved manually.  This wasn’t a problem for my flight from New York to London to Helsinki, though.  My best guess is that this “codeshare” flight that I’d gotten is not part of the Oneworld transatlantic joint venture (and was more of an ad hoc ‘sure I guess we can sell that given COVID problems’), so the computer system couldn’t handle it.  Security was virtually deserted, and I had the friendliest security guards that I’ve ever had at Manchester. 

Boarding started about 15 minutes after the schedule time.  Given how few flights there are at Heathrow (and thus a low probability of needing to go into a holding pattern), this was not unexpected.  I boarded at the end of my “zone” so as to minimize my time on the aircraft.  Across from me was a couple who had been downgraded from Club Europe.  I don’t know what the story was there, but they were given some champagne from in front of the Club curtain.  Given that the exit row has more space than normal Club Europe seats, the only thing they were missing out on was the Tesco-level sandwich box.

The time in air was barely more than 35 minutes, but that didn’t stop the family in front of me from barely wearing their masks—to the point where the flight attendant, and the couple across from me, had both to remind them, separately.  No in-flight entertainment was offered, and the service consisted of a snack bag, like the previous time I took this flight (with Krister).

Upon arrival, I had to transfer from Terminal 5 to Terminal 2 because Finnair never moved to Terminal 5, despite having seemed to have planned to in July…  For whatever reason.  I opted to take the free train transfer to Terminal 2 instead of the ‘behind the scenes’ busses.

We got some quick dinner in the terminal and pretty soon it was time to board the flight—an A321 (OH-LZT).  Finnair, like many airlines, has switched to a back-to-front boarding process, which is known to be the slowest possible­ boarding process.  Their idea is to minimize movement in the cabin, which is understandable.  But no less than three times, they made an announcement for everyone to hurry up and sit down faster.  I made it a point to complain loudly to Krister that it’s ridiculous that they use the slowest possible boarding method and then complain we’re too slow.  I think this was probably one of the first times the crew had had to deal with such a full flight in quite a long time.  And the A321 is a very long aircraft, so of course it boards slowly.  If they were so worried about boarding faster, they should’ve flown one of the A350s that were just sitting around.

An A350 would’ve also been good because it would’ve been a lot more spacious, given its larger capacity over the A321.  Krister was not pleased with how full the flight was.  It was just as full as the flight we’d had from Stockholm to London, but I think the difference was that we had sat in Club Europe on that one (and so the curtain hid the back half from us).  Since we are Oneworld Emerald members (from BA Gold status), we were greeted by one of the flight attendants, who informed us of our flight time of 2 hrs 20 min and that we were slightly delayed due to de-icing procedures.

The in-flight service consisted of a drink and a cookie, just like on our previous Helsinki – Manchester flight.  I did notice that the seatbacks have a device holder on them, which is clearly meant to hold an iPad, rather than an iPhone. 

We landed about 15 minutes late into Helsinki because of the delay leaving London.  One the plus side, this meant that we were the last flight and so the line for a COVID test on arrival was virtually non-existent.  Last time, it took at least 30 minutes to do the entire process; this time it took less than 10, which is an amazing improvement. (And my COVID test came back negative merely 15 hours later)

In summary, these two economy-class flights were relatively typical.  British Airways’ lounge in Manchester is still closed, but Finnair has a contract lounge in Terminal 2.  Since we forwent the lounges, I won’t score the ground experience. This was Krister and my first experience flying on a crowded airplane in economy during COVID, and overall, the flights were fine.  The exit row seat on the first flight was comfortable and had pretty good leg room (4/5).  The second flight definitely had more restricted legroom, which is to say it was standard for economy in Europe (3/5).  The flight attendants were efficient and made sure everyone was following procedures properly (5/5).  The snack service on the first flight (3/5) was better than on the second flight, which was a bit strange (2/5).  The lack of even WiFi on the first flight fit the retro livery (0/5), and the Finnair flight had its typical WiFi offering (3/5).  Overall, the flights get scores of 12/20 and 13/20. 

For these two flights, I earned 50 (10 + 40) tier points.  For the domestic leg, I earned 250 base Avios (50% of a 500 minimum) and 500 tier bonus Avios.  For the second leg, I earned 1 134 base Avios (100% of the distance) and an equal number of tier bonus Avios because the second leg credited with a BA flight number.  Since Krister booked directly with Finnair, he received 1 134 base Avios but no tier bonus Avios because it credited as an AY (Finnair) flight number.