Finnair.

I have been flying with Finnair a few times over the years. Here is my 5 cents about This fine airline.

Finland is stuck in the far northeast corner of Europe. In many ways, this should not be the ideal location for a successful airline. But Finnair has shown that it’s possible to have success.

It’s the national airline of Finland and has a lot of domestic flights around this fairly bit country. It also serves many European destinations. And surprisingly it has a large number of flights to Asia. Because the globe is shaped like an egg (sorry flat earth people, you are wrong), it’s faster to fly from the north of Europe to Asia than from the south of Europe. With the northern location of Helsinki, Finnair has an advantage when flying to Asia. So you can fly from Helsinki direct to cities like Seoul, Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai, Nanjing, Saigon and many many more airlines.

I have mostly flown Finnair within Europe though. They connect very well from Denmark to the Baltic countries and also to Russia. Last time I flew them was 2 weeks ago when I was in Tallinn.

Helsinki Airport is a nice transfer airport.

I like Helsinki Airport.

If you like me is going to another destination than Helsinki, then you will most likely transfer at Helsinki Airport. This is not bad though. Cause Helsinki Airport is perfect for that I think. It’s fairly small, so you can easily walk across the airport if you have to. But it’s not so small that there is nothing to do. There is a fair amount of shops and a couple of nice cafes and a couple of nice bars. Beer in Finland is not cheap though. But if you can live with paying a bit extra for your beer, then the service is very good at Helsinki airport. I like the Arctic Bar in particular.

Getting ready to board Finnair.

Nice legroom on Finnair flights.

OK legroom with Finnair. Even on a short flight.

The legroom on the intereuropean flights is good. Much much better than with budget airlines and also better than most other airlines.

Friendly multilingual cabin crew at Finnair.

The Finnair cabin crew seems to be very well trained. I have still not come across a flight attendant on Finnair who did not speak at least 3 languages fluently. I think this is a great service and shows that the airline does not just hire anyone from the streets who is ready to serve drinks on a plane.

And Helsinki Airport always work, even if it’s very cold there at times. In fact, the ground handling guys wear shorts even when it’s below freezing 🙂

Helsinki baggage handlers wearing shorts in December.