Originally Posted by LRD
Surprisingly, a search didn't find anything on this subject.
Finnair's website lists a "DATE-First Class Lounge" at SVO - I assume that's a shared lounge and the only one available to oneworld members...
Is the lounge a decent enough place to wait for my departure to HEL?
Two my knowledge there are two shared lounges at SVO. As far as I can recall they are absolutely indistinguishable. I'm even convinced that SU gave me entry tickets to different lounges on consecutive SVO-LHR on flights in May, as one seemed to be much closer to departure gates than the other. The one[s] I recall were windowless and had two rooms (smoking and non-smoking). There were various free newspapers and magazines (mostly Russian-language), an excellent juice selection, reasonable selection of other refrigerated soft drinks/beer and a service bar area (but my experience was that one had to hunt for someone to pour a mixed drink/wine). There were also a large number of buterbrodi [Russian open sandwiches], rolls and similar snacks.
The lounges aren't on a par with, say, LHR Terraces, The Wing or QF's lounge in SYD, but except for the lack of windows it's a perfectly acceptable place to recover from the preceding stressful hours of traffic jams, customs, check-in and passport control at SVO.