Finnair seat selection and transfer

[JJR]

Hi all

Just booked business class tickets between LHR-HEL and then to Asia. I made separate bookings to avoid paying the excess APD, and booked both tickets with Avios from the BA website which had lower tax than the Finnair website. Two questions:

1. Prior to booking, I was made aware of Finnair charging for seat selections even on business class tickets. To my surprise, in the seat selection section of My Booking page, the cost of selecting seats is zero. Has anyone experienced this? Want to avoid having to pay at check-in – I’d rather be allocated and pay no fee, but if Finnair has decided to change its policy, then I’d jump in and select the seats I want. I have no EC status – so just Blue.

2. As a British national, coming from Non-Schengen and travelling to Non-Schengen, is 1.5 hrs enough for the transfer? I will have no checked-in luggages, and am not fussed about not going to the lounge. Am aware of the accountability of ‘making’ the connection due to the separate bookings.

Thanks a lot in advance.

[yonasl]

The cheapest tariff does not include seat selection but avios tickets usually are a notch above (otherwise you also wouldn’t have access to the lounge with the cheapest AY business ticket).

Good luck with your transfer … you a re a brave man (or woman)

[Alex G]

In theory, redemption bookings don’t allow free seat reservations. Unless you have status, you cannot select seats for free, even at OLCI.

in practice, I was able to select a middle pair in advance through RJ for long haul, and AY for short haul.

You need to clear security when transferring in the non Schengen zone. If everything is on time, you should be OK. Personally I wouldn’t risk it, but then I am risk averse (I had a back up flight booked for a 3 hour connection on separate tickets at HND recently. It was worth the £70 (2 pax) for me for peace of mind. If you miss the connection, I think you will lose your Avios, and the redemption fee. However, the MCT at HEL is 40 minutes, and AY long haul flights are filled with people on connections. If your inbound flight is late, the chances are that there will be other people on the flight with the same connections. Talk to the cabin crew, and see if they have any expedited arrangements for clearing security in that event.

You do get Lounge access with a J class redemption, and it is a good lounge.

AY J class is a great product. Loved the seat, the espresso, the excellent service, and the external cameras.

[Jon]

The couple of times I’ve done this (most recently yesterday) I’ve always erred on the side of caution and booked a night (or several) in Helsinki, to avoid missed connection risk. Lovely city and easy to get into on the train in 35 minutes or so. The new(ish) library is an impressive building and worth a look.

One thing to be aware of is that Helsinki airport is loooong… 😉 If you are connecting same-day, then with any luck your incoming and outgoing gates might be right next to each other. But if you need to walk from one end to the other, or from a far gate to immigration and then to the train station, it can seem like an age… 😉

I found immigration from London the other day, and outbound to Bangkok yesterday, was very quick, even now that we have to use the “All Passports” lanes instead of the EU ones. Airport seemed very quiet at around midday yesterday. Security also fairly fast – they have the new scanners that mean you don’t need to take anything out of your bags.

I was on Avios redemptions and got free seat selection and lounge access, though that was probably due to being OW Emerald. Agree re the new seat, and the overall product – crew, service, F&B all superb.

One other thing to note – if you have OW (but not Finnair) status and put that on your booking, and *then* add your booking to the Finnair app, it appears to overwrite it with your AY membership number, so you have to change it back or ask them to do it at check in. One to keep an eye on 😉

[mzb]

My experience arriving from LHR into HEL is that you will be desambarking straight into the non-schengen departure hall (e.g. you don’t need to go through security). Coming from Asia, that is not true – you will have to go through security regardless of where you go next.

[Alex G]

mzb wrote:

My experience arriving from LHR into HEL is that you will be desambarking straight into the non-schengen departure hall (e.g. you don’t need to go through security). Coming from Asia, that is not true – you will have to go through security regardless of where you go next.

Thanks for that. My experience was coming in from Asia!

[Metty]

@Jon yes it’s worth saying over and over to beware of the Finnair App.

Just back from Stockholm-Helsinki-Malaga and return. Didn’t start too well with a misconnect ARN-HEL to HEL-AGP due thunderstorms at Helsinki. Before the trip I warned my travel buddies to be very careful logging into the Finnair App as it has a delightful quirk of changing ones BA number to AY. So on board ARN-HEL I thought I’d go on Chat to try and get ahead of what I expected to be a big queue for rebooking at HEL, logged on and eventually told to go to the transfer desk at HEL.

They rebooked us on the 0600 HEL-AGP the next morning. I think at this stage my BA number was overwritten with AY but I didn’t notice until after a day in the bars and nature reserves of Torremolinos. AY Chat said they’d fixed it and to be fair, my boarding passes showed my BA number.

Today I logged on to find AGP-HEL and HEL-AGP both credited to Finnair rather than BA. AGP-HEL is particularly odd as that one has always and still does show my BA number on the boarding pass. HEL-AGP showed AY on BP (but I hadn’t noticed at the time).

On Chat just now, the agent said he can only see BA for the whole booking so can’t explain why AY was credited and has wiped the Avios and points, suggesting I talk to BA in 72 hours.

Finnair (like BA) has free messaging if you put your FF number in, but if the downside is overwriting your BA number then that’s a real issue, so be careful out there!

[AndrewT]

As a reference point, not entirely of my choice but I’ve just been through a minimum 40 minute Non-Schengen – Schengen connection in Helsinki, including passport control, no security. Did it in 22 minutes gate to gate at a brisk walk.

[BJ]

Just to provide additional reassurance info provided by @Alex and others here is reliable. Sometimes the 10am flight from LHR gors on a bus stand at HEL but still no problems. Flew to/from Asia on AY numerous times to/from both EDI and LHR. Only rver missed the connection once. Everything was sorted while in the air inclufing overnight hotel and flight next day.

[JJR]

Thank you all for your input. So based on my experience,

Business Class tickets purchased using Avios let you select seats for free.
While the LHR-HEL and HEL-Asia were booked separately, the Heathrow check-in operator issued boarding passes for all itineraries.
There were no queues at both the Economy and the Business Class check-in desks.
I checked in early – early as in while they were checking in people on board a Finnair flight that took off two hour before mine. I did that because I needed to work at the airport. This can come in handy if you want to do a lounge crawl at Terminal 3.
The Business Class tickets let you go through the Fast Track Security lane. The security process took me less than five minutes.
I had no luggages to check in, so don’t know whether the luggages will end up at your final destination, or you’ll need to pick them up at HEL and re-check them in.

The flight was slightly delayed at LHR but still landed on time at HEL.
There were other people in my LHR-HEL flight who were also boarding on the plane to Asia, so felt somewhat assured that it wasn’t just me with short connection time.
After getting off the plane, I didn’t need to do anything – no security, no passport control (I had no checked-in luggages). I was literally in the terminal after a few steps out of the plane, and my next plane was a few gates away.
Even had time to visit the lounge, which I wasn’t even planning anyway. There were still some people there waiting for flights to SIN and HKG.

The seat is outstanding. I was travelling on my own so chose 8L which is strongly recommended – there is no one behind you, the restroom is on the other side, and surprisingly food came over quicker than some of the seats in front of me. Was somewhat worried about the noise from the galley behind, but could hardly hear anything, even without the noise-cancelling headset.

Needless to say, really enjoyed the whole experience. Will definitely be my choice as long as reward seats are available and on the assumption that they keep the low tax fees.

[zapato1060]

Thank you. I booked for next year CPH-HEL-SIN and HKG-HEL-CPH in J. The CPH-HEL legs in J are free as it’s zone 1. I managed to get a seat selection that showed £0.00 which I hope won’t give me trouble.

I hope it stays that way too. 62.5k is ridiculously cheap let alone the taxes and no peak pricing like BA/QR. Rob says there’s bad news on the QR horizon so hopefully won’t drive too many to AY.

[Mike G]

Sorry to hijack the thread. I’ve booked flights to Singapore for next summer. Have got separate tickets on the way home though as I didn’t have enough avios at the time to get the flight through to Manchester. The flight arrives in Helsinki around 6am and the flight to Manchester on a separate ticket leaves at 8:20. Is this likely to be ok or am I playing a risky game? Will have checked luggage but have heard that they’ll check it through to Manchester in Singapore.

[RarityMonk]

Mike G wrote:

Sorry to hijack the thread. I’ve booked flights to Singapore for next summer. Have got separate tickets on the way home though as I didn’t have enough avios at the time to get the flight through to Manchester. The flight arrives in Helsinki around 6am and the flight to Manchester on a separate ticket leaves at 8:20. Is this likely to be ok or am I playing a risky game? Will have checked luggage but have heard that they’ll check it through to Manchester in Singapore.

Hello. New registered user here (first post) but HfP regular reader. We’ve done this route on a couple of occasions recently and (provided your bags are checked through) you’ll be fine. These flights are nicely coordinated to hop off one and onto the other. You’ll even have time to visit the BC lounge, which is next to the MAN gate, though you may have to wait a short while for it to open.