Final flight to England on Finnair

To finish my last trip to continental Europe, I had to return to England to get ready to pack.  I had wanted to fly directly into London, but Finnair had stopped selling flights into London because of Heathrow’s problems.  So instead, I booked a flight to Manchester.  Finnair’s flight to Manchester is one of the few non-BA routes that earns 80 tier points, so in terms of earning extra tier points, it worked out nicely.  And it meant I could go see my friends in Liverpool one final time. 

I arrived at Helsinki Airport by train.  Helsinki Airport is probably my favorite airport in Europe.  The airport is extremely efficient, and the new check in area is gorgeous. 

My Business Light ticket doesn’t offer priority ground services, baggage, or lounge access.  However, I get those anyway through my BA Gold status.  It’s interesting because it seems to me like Finnair’s ‘light’ tickets are a way to offer a discount to status holders in exchange for no flexibility.  That’s fine by me.

I cleared priority security and then proceeded directly to the Platinum Lounge, which is in the non-Schengen zone.  I hadn’t had a chance to try out the Platinum Lounge last month, and now that I had a chance to experience it after the reopening, I’m definitely bummed that I missed it because the lounge was excellent.

I started my lounge visit at the dining area (and I had skipped lunch in preparation).

The lounge consists of several parts, including the bar area, the shower area, the dining room, and the back area.  The back area was closed.  I had visited this section previously (pre-pandemic) when the Finnair Gold/Business Lounge was being renovated.  This was my first opportunity to have a sit-down meal in the lounge post-pandemic.

I was seated immediately upon arrival and handed the menu, which was full of great choices. 

The way the food was set up was that the appetizers and desserts were available on demand from the buffet.  The main courses were served fresh from the kitchen.  The appetizer spread was great and included a wide variety of both typical Finnish foods and more exotic choices.  I ordered the carbonara and a blueberry margarita from the waitress. 

I took some soup and vegetables, as well as a Swedish cheese dish.  For my main course I got the carbonara.  The soup was flavorful and just the right temperature and spice level.  The vegetables were exactly as expected, and the cheese was excellent.  The carbonara was cooked the proper Italian way and was exactly what I wanted.  I didn’t expect the chips on top of the pasta, and they weren’t my favorite, but they didn’t detract from the experience.

For dessert, I went for both a sweet and a savory item: chocolate cake and a cheese course.  I’m not usually big on chocolate, but I took one for the team on this one.  The cheese options were excellent, and the cake was rich but not overly so.

After the meal, I went over to the bar to relax before my flight. I got another blueberry margarita as well.

I then settled down into the lounge chairs by the bar to enjoy my margarita.

I headed over to my gate once I got the notification that the flight was boarding. Interestingly, the flight to Manchester left from the gate right beside the flight to London.  Seeing the two aircraft beside each other really speaks to the difference in size of the A350 vs the E190 and the relative demand to Manchester.  I still aspire to fly Finnair to Europe one day; I’ve tried twice but haven’t yet succeeded because of the pandemic. 

I’ve flown between Helsinki and Manchester many times, and I’ve always been impressed that this route exists, given that I assume most people on the flight aren’t Finnish.  I sometimes wonder if this flight wouldn’t be necessary if Heathrow didn’t have such poor connections to anywhere other than Paddington station.

Business class on the E190s is simply the first few rows of seats, in front of the moveable curtain.  On this flight, there were 6 people across 3 rows of business class.  Briefly during the pandemic, seats were blocked, but now everything is back to normal, which is to say no seats were blocked.  The other downside of the regional aircraft is the lack of WiFi or any other type of IFE.  There was also no duty-free sales like on mainline aircraft.

Shortly after takeoff, the inflight service began with a drinks service.  The flight attendant then came around a second time with drinks right before serving the meal.  I had ordered a seafood meal, and I noticed that everyone was served a salmon meal.  The only difference I could tell was that everything on my tray came prepackaged and had a specific type of bread and had a different (vegetarian) starter.

I started with some blueberry juice and champagne, like I always do on Finnair flights.

The special meal consisted of fruit and cheese as a starter.  This was served with bread, and the salmon dish.  The salmon was cooked well, and the side dishes with it were flavorful and appropriate.

The food was as good as meals I’ve gotten on intercontinental business class flights, just a bit smaller.  The only downside was that I wasn’t very hungry after the amazing food in the lounge.

After the meal service, I worked for a while on my laptop before it was time to begin our descent.  Landing into Manchester is not my favorite thing, but this is probably the last time that I’ll do it for quite some time.

In summary, my last flight into England on Finnair was decent, but definitely not as good as the flight to London.  Finnair’s ground experience at Helsinki Airport with the Platinum Lounge is amazing (5/5).  The E190 seat itself is good, but the lack of guaranteed free seat is a bummer, even though I lucked out this time (2/5).  The seafood meal that I pre-booked was the best meal I’ve had on a regional flight ever (5/5).  The service was excellent as per usual (5/5).  Unfortunately, the E190s have no IFE (0/5).  Overall, the flight gets a 17/25, which reflects the fact that the physical plane is a far cry from the wide bodies that Finnair flies to London.  The soft product, however, was just as good.  If I’d had this soft product on the A350, it would’ve easily gotten a 24/25.

Like the flight to Helsinki, this flight was the only one that vaguely worked with my schedule at a reasonable price.  And beyond that, it still offered the full 80 tier points that make flights between Finland the UK great for earning BA status.  By crediting the flight to BA, I earned 1 976 Avios and 80 tier points.  I paid for the flight on my Chase Sapphire Preferred card for a similar reason as my flight from Copenhagen.  Doing so gave me an overall return of 11.6% in points on this business class flight.