Lounges in HEL and TLL
 

I'm flying from HEL to TLL next month to for a but of a holiday in Estonia and Latvia a bit then flying back TLL to HEL (with AY) and onwards to LHR with BA.

Could someone help me with the following questions, please?

Q1. What are my chances of getting my bag tagged all the way to LHR from TLL? I have separate AY and BA bookings?

Q2. I understand that the Schengen lounge in HEL is being renovated next month - are there any alternatives that are being made available in the meantime? I have Oneworld Sapphire status (BA silver)

Q3. Is there a Finnair or Oneworld lounge in TLL I can use?

Any advice would be most welcome

Q1.100%
Q2.Not yet announced that there will be access to any lounge for OWS passengers.
Q3.Only one lounge in Tallinn,Nordea Lounge(contract) and it serves all alliances,Priority Plus and possibility to buy an access(around 30€).

Jaenks nicely covered the answers, would just like to emphasize that there is no Sapphire/J Class lounge access at HEL for Schengen departures during the lounge renovation. This is official from AY. Only for Emeralds.

Thanks gents for the replies. I'm sure I can forgo one lounge without too much difficulty. At least I can use the non-schengen lounge on the HEL - LHR return leg.

A follow up question: is there a way for the OP to use the non-Schengen lounge at HEL? IIRC there is only passport control to the non-Schengen area, no ticket control. And if you use the automated lines there are hardly any queues either. Is it a problem to get back to the Schengen area?

It is easy to move between the dep. areas, especially with biometric passport and through the automated control gates..the question is more if the non-schengen lounge, which is already congested, will allow schengen pax in..I don't think there's a definite answer to that at present and it might be that they will have new rule in place with Schengen lounge closure in 10 days.

Let's see, personally I hope they will not give access..as said also the non-schengen lounge is often full and I do not want to see Silvers/Sapphires from schengen side making it an even more of a mess.

But outside of certain departures it is almost empty!

True, but allowing access during slow hours would just make things more complicated and confusing. I'm quite certain the rules officially require a non-schengen boarding pass to enter the area anyway so it's very easy call for AY to do this...using the automated gates this responsibility lies with the pax but that is naturally controlled later on again at the gate/lounge. If they want to do something for statusless J/Silvers/Sapphires, offering a voucher to some food/drink stalls would be best.

This would also be a great time to axe the Silver lounge access completely...now that they get 3-4 months experience with Schengen dep. w/o any access...that would offer some real cost saving for AY and they could use that saving (or even 10% of it!) to enhance J catering standards.

Actually there are 2 Finnair Lounges in the Schengen area. I visited both a few weeks ago (as well as the Non-Schengen Lounge) and wrote some reviews with pictures on loungeguide.net.

There is indeed the Finnair lounge proper for frequent flyers, and the Business class lounge for business class passengers, both located under the control tower.

But if I understood correctly, both are to be closed for renovations at the same time. Besides, the business class lounge does not accept economy-ticketed frequent flyers.

I have always been admitted to the Tower lounge as AY Gold even when travelling in Y...

This is indeed really bad for at least Gold and Bus pax, not having any lounge available (not even a Diners crappy lounge).
Why wouldn't they arrange something: it would be easy for example to have some vouchers at transfer-desk against BP, at least for Gold&Biz

Once they actually tried to deny me entry to Tower lounge, on a AY J ticket and plat card. YMMV

Yeah, they tried to bounce me to the Finnair lounge on a J (upgraded from Y but they could not know at that point) on the basis that I had elite status.

+1. And they said they usually do that. Reason given was limited capacity.