April Europe Weekend/Review Trip! Part 3: Budapest back to Helsinki

Switching back to my April Europe trip, we have another intra-European Business Class flight on Finnair!  Finnair’s strongest offerings are, like most airlines, from their main hub.  Budapest is not a particularly large airport, but it does offer multiple lounges.  The Skycourt lounge was the default lounge for Finnair, but there was also the Plaza Premium lounge right next door that was accessible using Priority Pass.  There was also the Platinum lounge (which also could be accessed using Priority Pass) in another section of the terminal.

I decided to check out the Skycourt lounge because it seemed somewhat more unique, but really all the lounges looked approximately the same.  I wasn’t particularly enthralled by any of the options. 

Upon entering the lounge, it was clear the lounge wasn’t anything special, haha.  The lounge primarily consists of one large room.

To the left side of the main area is the buffet, which consisted of some cold breakfast options and breads.

I wasn’t particularly hungry, so selected a couple small plates from the cold items area (including yogurt and some cold cuts).  They were sufficiently uninspiring that I didn’t even remember to take a picture, haha.

But at least the sitting areas were comfortable!

I wasn’t very incentivized to stay in the lounge any longer than necessary, so I headed to the gate in time for initial boarding.

Boarding completed quickly, and business class was mostly empty that day, which meant I got an entire row to myself. That’s about all you can hope for with a standard European Business arrangement.

Shortly after takeoff, the in-flight service began.  I ordered a coke zero as my drink.  The standard meal offered to everyone was chicken, which was great for me.  I’m happy that Finnair’s cost-cutting has meant that they’re consistently serving chicken instead of beef now. 

The cold appetizer was fun and felt refreshing and appropriately Finnish. The chicken dish was simple but well made for what it was (chicken, brussels sprouts, and mashed potatoes). I always maintain the food doesn’t need to be faux fancy as long as it’s done well.

The meal was not particularly memorable, but I did really enjoy the Fazer chocolate bar again. Since this flight was just under two hours, they also did a second drinks service after the meal.

Finnair and Helsinki Airport claim that the airport can be transited in only 35 minutes, which is how long my connection was, so I was looking forward to putting that to the test.  Realistically, I had 0 problem missing my flight to LAX and getting re-routed, so I was very unstressed getting off my first flight and testing their claim.

In summary, this Intra-European Business class flight was decent.  The ground game in Budapest was pretty weak overall, but that’s not unexpected for a random outstation (2/5).  Having an entire row to myself is as much as you can hope for within Europe (4/5).  The service on the flight was decent (4/5), and the food was pretty good for such a short flight (4/5).  In-flight service was solid as per usual (4/5).  The in-flight entertainment was typical, with only a short duration of free WiFi (2/5).  This flight gets an overall score of 16/25, which is slightly below average and speaks to the weakness of Budapest Airport’s premium offerings. 

I booked this flight as part of an American Airlines ticket from Budapest to San Francisco to Milan.  This flight cost around $150 as part of that overall ticket and earned me 40 BA tier points, as well as 2 295 Avios and 750 Amex points, for a total points return of around 27%.