Review of Finnair flight Amsterdam → Helsinki in Economy

Hi there,

On the day prior to my flight, I received a notification from operations that my standby at home was activated and that I will have to position myself to Tampere, Finland. Tampere is connected to Amsterdam's network, but this flight unfortunately does not run on a wednesday, therefore they booked me on a flight to Helsinki with Finnair with a train ride of approximately 90 minutes up north to Tampere.

The benefit of flying Finnair to Helsinki is that they are regularly using widebody aircraft on their route to Amsterdam and today I lucked out with their Airbus A350-900, which they often use due to slot restrictions at Amsterdam.

As my flight was scheduled to leave at 11:55 AM, I decided to catch the train from my hometown around 09:00 AM. The trainride itself took about an hour to get to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol meaning that I would arrive about 2 hours prior to my flight's departure.

Luckily enough I had no delay given that Amsterdam's Airport railnetwork is getting a major overhaul.

Eventually made my way to the departure hall where Finnair was using row 1-2 in Terminal 1. Those rows are generally used for all airliners that are not low-cost, have no affiliation to Skyteam and with a departure in the Schengen area. It tends to force you to use the self check-in service, which is very down to earth and should not be difficult to understand.

As drop off is usually not that busy and have plenty of stations, this process doesn't take more than a few minutes. 

Given that security was quite busy, I was glad that I was able to skip the majority of the line by my access to Privium and it took about 10 minutes for me to clear. Could have been quicker, but unfortunately my bag was pulled out for some extra scanning as my cabin luggage tend to be full of electronics. Once passed, I made my way to Lounge 28, Privium Express, which is located behind the I Amsterdam shop and does have a terrace if you wanted to use it.

The Privium Express Lounge isn't overly large, but was neatly maintained and gave a nice vibe. A much better vibe than the Aspire Lounge which I used quite often prior to my access of Privium. 

Some more seating area.

Decided to grab myself some coffee.

Food offering was limited to some pastries, bread, spreading, yoghurts, cereals and eggs. Not that impressive, but I usually am not a massive fan of western breakfast (despite being one?), so I didn't bother much to get some.

Wine was also on offer.

As the lounge was located in front of the d-pier, I decided to leave the gate about 10 minutes past our scheduled boarding time as our flight would depart from gate D73. The d-pier is a pier shared by both schengen/non schengen departures with the lower floor being used for non schengen departures. As it is shared, this pier is probably the worst one for schengen departures with limited seating capability and just a few shops to explore.

As the window blinds were down at our gate, this was the only photo I could take of our aircraft.

OH-LWO, a 5.2 year old Airbus A350-900 was going to bring us over to Helsinki. This aircraft was newly delivered to Finnair in April 2019 and is carrying the Moomin livery (which is a very famous Finnish Comic Strip). Finnair's A350-900 are in a 32 J Class, 304 Y Class configuration with the first 42 Y class seats being sold as Economy comfort. 

The boarding area was quite deserted by the time I reached the gate, which made me believe that they started to board the aircraft well in advance of the scheduled boarding time and could make my way to the aft of the aircraft without any blockage, while being greeted by most flight attendants along the way.

Seat 60A would be my seat for today's departure and legroom was obviously no issue at all for a 2.5 hour flight on a widebody. Don't think this legroom would cause any issue on longhaul flights either.

Window view from my seat with an Airbus A330 of Turkish Airways being pushed back for it's departure to Istanbul.

The seat also comes with an IFE system, which was activated for our flight and had a decent selection of entertainment possibilities. Enough to entertain someone for a longhaul flight. It also came with a USB plug, however was unable to locate any power socket.

A visual impression of the cabin, which to me feels a bit dull.

Unfortunately the cabin is also not equiped with individual air vents and the cabin was quite hot for quite some time given that the airconditioning system was not turned on.

The literature in the seat pocket contained of a disposal bag and a safety card. Some earphones were also available at your seat for you to use for the IFE. Poor quality as usual.

While we were ready for push back, the captain announced himself that we were delayed by about 20 to 25 minutes due to restrictions given by Helsinki to our flight and apologized to us for that. Pushback was eventually performed at 12.19 PM with a delay of 24 minutes past our scheduled departure.

It took another 20 minutes for us to be airborne as Runway 36L was in use for departures, which is the most distant runway of Schiphol.

We were rolling for departure at 12.38 PM giving us a total delay of 43 minutes with a scheduled flighttime of 1 hour 55 minutes according to the captain.

The table seemed to be properly cleaned and was foldable and sturdy.

When passing through flight level 100, WiFi was turned on with three packages, which I found quite expensive to be fair and didn't make sense for this flight. A full flight will set you back to 20 EUR, while the flight itself takes less than 3 hours and you could save money by buying the 3 hour package for 15 EUR?

If you didn't pay for the WiFi, you were still able to use the app of Finnair, which gave you access to Newspapers,  Tabloids and a variety of magazines.

A few audiobooks were also available if you prefered to listen.

About thirty minutes past our departure, the flight attendants came around to provide their buy on board service, however Finnair provides you write complimentary tea/coffee, water and blueberry juice. Their Buy-on-Board is somewhat limited, however I only opted for Finnair's blueberry juice which I kinda like.

While drinking my juice, I scrolled through their IFE system which was pretty easy to use.

Enjoying the view.

As the aisle seat was already occupied by the time I reached my seat, I took an opportunity to capture a photo of the seat when my neighbour left for the lavatories.

The captain announced himself about 20 minutes prior to landing as he was reporting that we were descending into Runway 15, gave us a weather update and thanked us for flying with Finnair and informed us that we would be leaving the aircraft via busses.

On the way to our stand we passed a few Finnair birds.

As we were disembarking the aircraft, I made a photo of the seat I was on during the entire flight and the problem with this seat is that row 60 isn't properly aligned to any window unless your seat is reclined.

Disembarkation of the aircraft went via the aft door as the aircraft pulled into a non-schengen stand as it would continue to Tokyo Haneda a few hours later. That's also the reason we were being shipped off by buses, but it always amazes that people do not listen and tried to rush to the front of the cabin to exit the aircraft as early as possible. It however gave me a great view of the aircraft that brought us over to Helsinki with the Moomin sticker being in full display.

Signage was clear and easy to understand.

And it took about 15 minutes after disembarkation for my luggage to appear on belt.

And now I'm off to Tampere. Thanks for stopping by!