casper79

AY6: JFK-HEL

No appetizer


Breakfast reduced to a plate of cold cuts



Flying two different airlines in two directions is quite nice to compare.
LHR - JFK: American Airlines
JFK - HEL: Finnair


General comparison:
- meal service: AA still has very nice appetizer and bigger main dish. Quality of main dish was the same and good on both. Desert on Finnair was a block of deep frozen ice, AA offers icecream with toppings served in a glass.
- cabin service: Both good, plat recognition on AA, not on AY.
- Seat: the seat on AA has a million customization options which is really nice. AY seat just slides down (both on A330/A350)
- Lounges: AA international first class lounge is amazing and substantially better than premium lounge in HEL.


But anyhow, while the experience on AA is better, the direct connections AY offers are a big win.

MagmaH

The J seats on A350 has very poor design. I dropped my phone under the seat and could not retrieve it, but the purser got a long metal stick to fish it out. She said it's not the first time. They should one of those casino sticks in those cases.

heatsink

I booked a trip at aurinkomatkat.fi and wasn't presented with the option to choose business or economy. I figured I was supposed to buy business later as an additional service, since it wasn't mentioned in the booking UI.

But no, I eventually had to call Aurinkomatkat and they told me that if business class is full on a particular flight, the option is never even shown to the customer. What the hell? How am I supposed to realize that I need to change the date rather than proceed further in the booking process??

Customer service was very nice and fixed this for me immediately, but who came up with this insane design...

Jainzar

While it is annoying for you I side with the sun travels in this case. If you always show an option that is not available you will create way more confusion. And given the amount of J vs Y travellers the big majority anyway wants Y.

heatsink

While I understand your point, you don't need to let people choose anything in this case. Everyone will end up on a page with options anyway, and it would be enough to just remove one of the checkboxes and insert a single sentence saying "Business class is full on this flight".

FlyingFinn

No it's not - there's no sauna nor Napue.

remymartin

Sure, the new lounge is a vast improvement from the old one, but I would not go as far as to say it's substantially better than the premium lounge in HEL. Infact, I'd actually say they are on par, but for reasons very different.

NoWindowSeat

Fully agree, I have yet to see an "amazing AA lounge". As far as North America goes I'd say the Qantas F Lounge @LAX is the best. With improved post security connections it is now easily usable for all OWE pax departing LAX.

intuition

Seat selection...
How far can Finnair go with this stupidity?

Now I have one plat, one gold and one statusless in the same reservation. The plat can chose seat, but cannot choose seat for the others. The gold cannot log in an choose seat either.

-- Added
All passengers in the reservation regardless of their own status can log into their own MMB and change seat for the platinum member though, that is really useful (not).

Jainzar

I completely agree. If you have more than one pax it is often easier to just ask CS to reserve them for you.

And I even wrote some time ago a nice defect for them about it. It seems like they didn't get there yet.

loimu

Sounds very annoying. I recently booked a trip and have myself and a non-member on the same booking. I chose the A350 exit seats for the both of us when being logged in under my name on the MMB. Now that I tried to log in with my friend's name, the seat selection options have all purple colour and it doesn't work and the page says "Seat already purchased". If I log in with my own name the seat selection tool is a white box with only a purple border and it lets me choose seats and also to move my friend around the plane.

Could the error in your case Intuition be that the Comfort seats aren't free for all passengers, regardless of being on the same booking? Not that this would be an acceptable reason to render the whole seat selection tool nonfunctional, though.

intuition

This is a shorthaul, so we are only looking to seat the three travellers together in the front of the cabin, so no special paid seats or anything.
It might be because it is award ticket, and they configured the system to not allow free seating on awards. Will call AY later and ask, but I doubt I will get an explanation. They will just make the seat selection manually and then think problem is solved.

lkrt

I've received the so far worst pre-departure email saying wrong hand baggage allowances and below that it says:

"30 kg's of hold baggage
Maximum weight 23 kg"

intuition

Haha, but I assume this is on a carrier with weight (and not piece) concept? Because it looks like you are allowed any number of bags as long as total weight is 30kg or less, and that no bag can be over 23kg (or heavy bag fees will apply).

Steve_Hun

Just made a booking last week for HEL-FRA-HEL and my sister will travel with me on that trip (so plat + gold pax). I could select exit row seats for both of us, without any issue.