Finnair Plus - FC taking over HEL-VNO - with Embraer 170!

As has already been speculated for a while, Finncomm will take over the HEL-VNO route starting on 16th of November. What's surprising is that the equipment will be ERJ-170 - obviously coming from Finnair but staffed and operated by FC.

Like the flights to TLL this is operated by FC for AY, so no cheap tickets from fc.fi (bummer!).

It'll be interesting to see if the AY pilot's association comes back with some threats since this is a direct violation of their contract - which is not in effect right now, though.

IMHO, Finncomm could handle all of the Baltics plus Poland and even Berlin with the Embraers.

Denmark, Norway and Sweden should have quite a lot of premium traffic but on the eastern and southern Baltic shores the LCC approach is probably the only possible one in the current market situation.

FinnComm is actually less a LCC than Finnair. Every time a sandwich + beverage on domestic flights as well. Finnair has a couple of spare E170´s which FC has now began operating.

I still do not fully understand the co-operation between FC and AY. Especially when booking domestic flights through the company travel agent. They claim that the AY and FC tickets can not be combined into one PNR and take two reservation fees from one return flight - incompetence or greed I suppose :confused:. FC sectors seem always to have the FC flight numbers. From the AY web, there is no problem getting both flights to one PNR and with AY flight numbers.

Does this mean that J class is axed from VNO?

I still do not fully understand the co-operation between FC and AY. Especially when booking domestic flights through the company travel agent. They claim that the AY and FC tickets can not be combined into one PNR and take two reservation fees from one return flight - incompetence or greed I suppose :confused:. FC sectors seem always to have the FC flight numbers. From the AY web, there is no problem getting both flights to one PNR and with AY flight numbers.

That sounds dubious. The travel agent should be able to book everything under a single PNR, albeit with the AY flight numbers just like the AY web site.

Are you sure the isn't a new corporate travel policy for cost cutting measures that disallows the (usually more expensive) domestic codeshares on AY and requires those connections to be booked on FC flight numbers?

My employer has a corporate deal with AY but not with FC. That is the explanation of the travel agent. However, I can order quite heavily discounted corporate rate (but still fully flexible Y-class) tickets for both legs of return flight as if using AY. That way I get only one service fee. Then before flying I just call AY to change one or both of the legs to flights operated by FC. That goes without any fees. If I would use travel agent for the changes, they would charge service fees (around 20€) for every change and they might have some computer says nay also... Weird!