The Photos


Off to HEL for the weekend started with an early departure from work and a couple of very slow tube journeys to Paddington.
There I was able to catch the 13:40 HEX to London Heathrow Central Station.

Upstairs and out into the daylight of the courtyard in front of the terminal building. A quick check of the monitors and I realised I needed to be at Zone G which is down the far end. On arriving there I realised that the AY desks are opposite the BA desks which makes sense I suppose give they are both One World. What doesn’t make sense of course is that CX and AA are at the opposite end of the terminal.

There was no one in the queue for Business class and I was quickly checked in and issued with a boarding pass. I moved on upstairs and approached the fast track security with some trepidation. After my last stint there I wasn’t going to fall for the same trick. I was able to peer through and see the line was not very long at all and decided to move on in.
The BP checker checked my BP and I went on in and joined the short queue. Whilst it did move it was at a snails pace. The security people must all have the sloth gene in them as there was no hurry about anything they were doing. Except talking which they were doing a lot of to each other.

I finally made it through unscathed and walked down to the passport check area where I was dealt with swiftly. Why is it only at T3 they do this?

I did a bit of shopping and asked to have it stored for pick up on my return.
They needed my return flight number and time of arrival. I pulled out my itinerary and realised I had not re-printed it since the last change which just happened to be the return flight for this weekend. I asked the sales person to hang on to it and will be back with the details.

I walked down to the BA Galleries lounge and asked the agent if she could look up my return flight details. She looked at my AY boarding pass and said no we don’t have access to that information. She didn’t even attempt to enter the PNR or anything. The return flight is actually a BA flight with a AY code share but it was obviously too much trouble for her. I went inside and down to the computers where I was able to bring up the flight details using check my trip. Out I went again and back to duty free where I filled in the form with my return flight details. The sales person told me where I need to pick up the goods on my return.

This service is only available to EU passengers and is a good way to circumvent the war on liquids when you are travelling hand baggage only.

Back to the lounge where I was swiped in a second time and made my way inside where I could finally relax.

I grabbed a small plate of stroganoff and rice as I had yet to eat any lunch. A glass or two of wine accompanied this repast.

As usual I had arrived way too earlier and needed to cool my heels for a while before thinking about heading to a gate. About an hour passed and I decided to go to the chemist for some last minute essentials for my trip and then headed down to the gate.

AY use a real gate a LHR T3 unlike BA who force people to endure busses for all their current T3 flights. Hopefully they won’t do that when they have 747s departing their in October.

Anyway I was on AY which meant a nice gate lounge to sit in for a few minute before boarding was announced.

Boarding was soon announced and Business class and OW Emerald and Sapphires were invited to board first. Then boarding was to proceed using the row numbers.

Flight AY840 LHR-HEL Seat 1A
Aircraft: 320
Departure time: 16:10

The seats on AY in J are the same as the economy seat with the middle seat blocked on both side. I usually don’t like bulk head seats but on recommendation from FT I chose the first row. I was glad I did as there was definitely more room in this row than in the rows further back.

I stashed my bag in the locker above and made myself comfortable. After boarding had completed the crew member came around and offered to hang my rain jacket in the closet. She then went through the cabin with a bottle of water and some paper cups inviting each passenger to take a cup.

The captain announced an ATC hold of 10 minutes and a flight time of 2 hours and 25 minutes. The safety demonstration was played on the IFE system.

There were 7 people encamped in the business class cabin for this flight. We pushed back at 16:35 and taxied out to the runway where we hit the sky with those 320 engines screaming their guts out at 16:51.

The aircraft was fitted with IFE that was switched to a nose wheel view for take off and then once in the air was switched to a camera pointing down. Pretty cool stuff for a domestic config plane.

Hot towels were handed around after the belt sign was switched off followed by an offer of an aperitif. Da, da, da, da I chose champagne. Very nice it was too. It was a wee bottle of Joseph Perrier Cuvee Royale Brut. A small bag of pretzel bits was also given out on which to snack.

After everyone had finished their drink the meal service was played out. The crew member delivered everything from the galley by hand without employing the use of the trolley. There was no option for the meal and everyone got the same meal deal.

On the tray was a salad plate with tuna, potato and bean salad. The main course was a chicken Chasseur dish with squash, spinach and lovely risotto. The dessert was a berry mouse type arrangement.

The food was pretty old school but was very tasty and quite filling for a ‘dinner’ service. A bread basket was offered after the crew member had handed out the meals to the first row. She also asked what wine I would like to drink. She repeated this row by row which seems a very efficient way to work the cabin. After she had finished serving the cabin she was back around again with the bread basket. Finally coffee was offered and re-filled whilst I sat and ate my dessert.

The IFE display had moved on from a view outside to a CNN production that was shown with English subtitles on the screen.

The seat on AY is quite hard and not terribly comfortable to fly in and I wouldn’t want to spend much longer than this flight in the seat.

I asked for another bottle of bubbles after the meal service which was cheerfully supplied by the crew member.

Now I thought the Brits clung to the past in a somewhat OTT manner but this champagne label takes the cake. On the bottom of the front label it stated ‘As supplied to the late Queen Victoria and King Edward VII’

The remainder of the flight was pretty uneventful and I spent most of the time staring out the window.

We landed at 21:17 local time and taxied to the gate. I was first off the plane and thanked the crew on my way out. Passport control was directly across the hall from the gate. I was quickly processed and went straight on out to the forecourt where I found the bus stop that the Finnair city bus left from. I had a ten minute wait before the bus came along.

A little over half an hour later the bus dropped me off at the station and I walked on down the ways trying to find my hotel for the night.

I found the Hotel Kamp and after a bit of a kerfuffle about the fact that I had an award stay followed by a paid stay, I managed to secure a suite upgrade for my two nights in Helsinki. When I approached the room I noticed it was the Tove Jansson suite who is the creator of the Moomin characters. I thought this was quite apropos as at one time a well known celebrity on the BA board said she always thought of Moomin when she saw my handle.


Next up a couple of days in HEL (picture report) and the flight back to London.



The Photos