Finnair A350 old style business to London

After my short pseudo-Finnair flight to Helsinki, I had an intentionally short layover at Helsinki’s Vantaa airport before connecting onto my Finnair A350 flight back to London. The London Heathrow to Helsinki route is my most commonly flown route in Europe, so I am intimately familiar with the various flight options on this route. Finnair currently operates 4 daily flights (its normal winter frequency), which is down from previous years’ summer frequencies of up to 7 daily flights.  British Airways used to also operate one daily flight on this route, but indefinitely dropped it at the start of the pandemic.  Finnair flights are bookable through the British Airways website on this route.  However, direct flights can only be booked into a flexible far bucket, which means the tickets are often very expensive, compared to booking a discounted ticket directly with Finnair.

I didn’t have much time on the ground, but Helsinki airport is known for being very efficient.  I was able to proceed from the arrival gate through exit passport control to my flight to London in under 30 minutes, which is impressive.  If I had had more time, I would’ve been able to use the Platinum Wing, which had reopened only days before my transit through Helsinki.  If I’d known that it was going to reopen, I would’ve booked I longer layover, but it’s hard to argue with the efficiency of my time on the ground.

I arrived at the gate shortly after priority boarding had begun.  This flight was operated on one of Finnair’s standard A350s, specifically OY-LWI, whose business class sits only between the first and second doors.  Other configurations have an additional four rows of business class past door 2. 

When I had booked the flight, business class was completely empty, so I selected seat 1A.

This aircraft had not received the new business class seats and instead had the Cirrus seats, which are extremely similar to American’s 777-300ER’s Flagship Business and A321T Flagship First seats.  I prefer the Collins Super Diamond seat found on American’s 777-200 Flagship Business and BA’s Club Suite. Compared to the standard intra-European business class seat that is simply a standard economy seat with a blocked middle seat, any intercontinental business class/lie-flat seat is excellent.  

There are no overhead bins above the center seats, which creates a very nice and airy cabin.  At my seat, bedding and some small earphones were waiting.

Shortly after take-off, the flight attendants came around to take drink orders. I had some champagne to start with and then some blueberry juice, as is typical when I fly on Finnair.

They then came through with the meal service.  I was surprised to learn that they only had a beef option loaded on the plane.  This is uncommon on the London service, and I wasn’t expecting it on a widebody flight.  Since I don’t eat beef, they instead gave me two of the salmon starters and a salad.  This was a perfectly fine solution, since I’d gotten some food on the previous flight and in the Copenhagen lounge.

It wasn’t the most impressive meal, but it worked.  Since this was an internationally configured aircraft, it had a proper IFE system, power outlets, and WiFi, which is impressive for a flight within Europe.  However, since I had bought a ‘Business Light’ ticket, I didn’t get the free hour of WiFi, which was a bummer, but the WiFi wasn’t too expensive if I had actually wanted/needed it.

After finishing my meal, I reclined the seat into a bed and took a short power nap for about 30 minutes.  I woke up as the flight was getting ready to land, and so I got to see some nice views of London that, at least in theory, included my apartment, but I wasn’t able to locate it from the air.

In summary, my first real Finnair flight in over a year was excellent.  I specifically booked a relatively short connection in order to fly the A350, but I had plenty of time to get to the plane because Helsinki airport is very efficient.  I’m going to skip scoring the ground experience for now because I wasn’t able to check out the newly-reopened Platinum Wing.  Finnair’s A350 business class seat is excellent for an intra-Europe flight (5/5).  Finnair is relatively inconsistent with having a fish option on their flights, so maybe I do just need to start pre-booking vegetarian meals (3/5).  The service was excellent.  All the crew were extremely friendly and were able to easily put together a suitable non-beef meal for me (5/5).  The seatback TV was great; no WiFi was included with the business light ticket, and I forgot that the free WiFi was only a Finnair elite (not Oneworld elite) perk (5/5).  Overall, this flight gets an 18/20, which represents how nice the flight was.

A non-trivial part of the reason that I booked this ticket was to get 120 tier points (40 for the first flight and 80 for the second).  I credited the flight to BA, so I earned Avios based on the distance flown, but unlike on American Airlines, I don’t bonus Avios from Gold Status, so the first flight netted me 973 Avios and the second flight netted me 1978 Avios.  I paid around $330 on my Chase Sapphire Preferred card and earned 660 Chase UR points.  Normally, I’d use the Platinum card, but I would’ve had to pay a 1.95% credit card fee.  Basically, I could’ve bought 1 025 Amex points for $6.44 (a rate of 0.6 ¢/pt).  It would’ve been worth it in theory because I could’ve gotten around $15.40 of value from the points, but as an irrational consumer, I didn’t go for it.  So instead, I earn a total of 2 951 Avios and 660 Chase UR points, for a return of around 15%.