Courmisch

Not everybody can afford to fly (long-haul) C. And nowadays, many, if not most, corporate travel policies ban business class, except for high-ranking executive or severe back medical condition.

WilcoRoger

I often start my reward booking on the AA website - they seem to give much more options than AY does. Often when AY shows no availability for a route they also serve, AA shows other options (AB, BA, etc)

Interestingly yesterday was the other way round - AA showed no direct flight availabilty for the day I needed, only AB with 6:20 am departures and long TXL layovers Went over to AY where to my great surprise there was direct AY availabilty on two (!) flights - and also showed some of the AB connections that AA offered (but not all of them)

niksal

700€ for a HEL-BRU-HEL (Sep 6th-7th)?!?!?! Difficult to justify that compared to SK 207€ via ARN. Is this for real???

lento

​​​​​​Quite normal on this route if your stay is less than 3 days

Jainzar

If you start in TKU/TMP there seems to be only a 1 night requirement. The route from there is not cheap either but you still save at least around 200€.

miamiflyer8

And the price difference to J is €260... At that price you might as well pay for J if you're statusless.

TPJ

https://www.ausbt.com.au/beijing-s-n...airline-market

While the article is about new BJS airport, there are market share statistics shown. I recall some 15 years ago European carriers dominated the CN-EUR market. Now CN3 already have 49% and if Haninan Group and Xiamen are added they are well above 50% market share.

I flew to AU in J with CA twice this year (once on their ridiculously low Black Friday sale and once for work as - in the meantime - they offered us very low Corpo J-class fare) and hard product is perfectly acceptable while soft product is extremely good (no - I am not insane, yes - I had low expectations, but F/A's are extremely nice and food is great).

Sorry for OT'ing, but this is höpö-höpö thread after all

WilcoRoger

Interesting - on general principle I try to avoid mainland Chinese carriers (as I did in the 90's and 00's with Russian ones - no travel to RU these days, so not issue anymore)

SPBanker

Aeroflot international flights are really quite good nowadays.

miamiflyer8

I've heard great things about their J product, both long haul and shorthaul. They have proper Business Class seats on short haul flights.

WilcoRoger

So I hear - but this was the 90's and not only SU but airlines that seemed to pop up in every town and village (a bit like China these days). At that time there was a general warning about to avoid flying to avoid on RU airlines and in RU airspace (their ATC was less than stellar those days). Easy peasy when you are in charge of the Russian business

TPJ

But I somehow recall - when I was flying quite frequently between CPH and ARN (and vv) in early 90's (circa 1993) - I had to go via passport control. It was a sort of 'show your passport and move on' control but passport booths were there. I somehow think these controls were only removed after Schengen was introduced. Or my memory is playing dirty tricks with me?

ffay005

Probably not.

Land borders and harbours had no border controls whatsoever, but airports did have. After all, airports were divided into domestic and international sections, and there was no separate Nordic section like we have Schengen today. So eg ARN-HEL was an international flight and upon arrival you proceeded to passport control. However, coming from ARN, you could just show your driving license instead, it was sufficient.

I don't know what upcountry airports did – most of the ones that had international traffic only had Nordic flights. Maybe there was no passport control since all international arrivals were Nordic arrivals.

Even if there are no border controls between the Nordic counrties, you will need to be able to proof your citizenship if questioned. So some kind of ID is required even if nobody wants to see it.

intuition

I remember flying into OSL (perhaps even FBU) at a time when they led all international flights through passport control. Of course I had no passport with me, so I just walked up to the booth and said "I am swedish" - got waved through.



AFAIK the nordic passport union does not require any kind of travel document or ID. As a child I travelled across the border more times than I can count without any ID. Even these days, with the "internal border control" at Öresundsbron you can enter without papers. (You'll be held for questioning while they check your story though)

Andaman

The Finnish Border Guard on travel documents, Nordic countries:

http://www.raja.fi/guidelines/travel_documents


The citizens of the Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland) are subject to passport freedom, which means that Nordic citizens can travel and reside in the Nordic countries without travel documents. If a Nordic citizen travels without a passport or personal identity card, it is recommended that he or she carry some other document issued by an authority. If necessary, authorities can exchange information related to the identity of a passenger in order to verify his or her identity.

The passenger must also check, for example from the transport companies’ websites, what documents the transport companies he or she uses accept as proof of identity.

When travelling from outside the Nordic countries into the Nordic countries, or from the Nordic countries out of the Nordic countries, Nordic citizens must, however, carry a passport or personal identity card that is a valid travel document.