Finnair Plus - AY 5 HEL->JFK: No OLCI / seat config weirdness?

I'm having a problem using OLCI on Finnair.com. It seems I am able to change my seat (with the change being saved), but when I go to finalize checkin and print a boarding pass (after filling in all my info, of course) it states something like "unable to checkin, please go to checkin desk".

Is this because it is a codeshare with AA? I thought it would work because AFAIK the flight is operated by Finnair (Finnair plane, crew, ticket bought at finnair.com, etc.)

Also, does anyone know what the deal is with the seats at the very end of the plane (Airbus 330) that have what looks like an empty space next to them (in the middle, instead of XXXX it is XX_X)? Is there really a middle aisle seat with no one next to it, or is there something horrible about these seats that I should know? Seatguru does not show the same config and only lists them as standard. :confused:

Is this because it is a codeshare with AA? I thought it would work because AFAIK the flight is operated by Finnair (Finnair plane, crew, ticket bought at finnair.com, etc.)


If you booked from the Finnair website but under an AA flight number, is that so? Anyway it shouldn't really matter, usually the OLCI is pretty good at finding codeshare bookings etc. - as is the case for you since you can actually get to the seat selection.

Maybe there's a note in your PNR or something like that that makes it impossible for the OLCI to work. You could try giving their web support (they have one, don't they?) a call.


Also, does anyone know what the deal is with the seats at the very end of the plane (Airbus 330) that have what looks like an empty space next to them (in the middle, instead of XXXX it is XX_X)? Is there really a middle aisle seat with no one next to it, or is there something horrible about these seats that I should know? Seatguru does not show the same config and only lists them as standard. :confused:

The fuselage is narrower back there, so the middle block only has three seats instead of four. It looks like it's a feature of the AY OLCI application that it cannot properly align the columns and display three seats on a block that has also four seats on other rows. Thus they just leave the place for one seat blank and end up with the result you described. No, there won't be a "middle aisle" seat - even though that would be a very interesting to have!

Thanks for your answer. :-)

Yeah, maybe they just need to scan my passport again or something since I have not travelled to the US in 8 months or so. It was just an ordinary Finnair booking with an AY code, not leisure or anything.

And I knew the middle aisle seat was too good to be true! But maybe now after reading my great idea they will implement it. ;)

Update: OK so now it seems to have mysteriously fixed itself when the flight was 24 hours, rather than 36 hours, away. Printed out the BP with no probs. Even though I could change my seat at 36 hours. Odd.

I think this is probably related to some U.S. immigration requirement. Finnair doesn't state this explicitly for some reason, but KLM state clearly that you can do OLCI 30 hours prior, except to the USA, OLCI can only be done 24 hours prior. At least I can't imagine why they would have such a policy if it wasn't mandated by U.S. authorities.

I think this is probably related to some U.S. immigration requirement. Finnair doesn't state this explicitly for some reason, but KLM state clearly that you can do OLCI 30 hours prior, except to the USA, OLCI can only be done 24 hours prior. At least I can't imagine why they would have such a policy if it wasn't mandated by U.S. authorities.

It's not US government requirements that prevent me from doing any and all online check-in within 24 hours of my US and European commercial airline flights from the EU & EFTA countries to the US, but I'm a US citizen.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es65)

But the discussion was about doing it more than 24 hours in advance.