sulkkis

Yeah,

And some weeks ago they did the same and when they started boarding they started to let people into plane from sides at the same time... what is the value of priority boarding?

- sulkkis

FFlash

I dunno how this is meant but I only remember one case when I was let pre-board as elite first just to find myself in a freezing mid-winter cold jetbridge waiting cleaning or whatever to step onboard. It was veeeeery privilidged boarding

intuition

Does anyone have detailed plans for the new entrance/departures hall?

I am specially interested in the implementation of the "blue box", ie the new security area for O/D passsengers, seen in this illustration:



It is supposed to connect the new entrance with the old departures hall (which in turn will be converted to airside.
Inside illustration shows it like this, (camera facing north-east) with new entrance to the right in the image, security to the left and to the far left there is a glimpse of the current south wall of current departures hall, which will later be airside



What I am specially interested in, is how they will connect the train-station. Currently you can walk from T1 train station and take elevator up into landside departures hall. This connection seems impossible in the future. Will train passengers have to exit building and walk quite a bit in order to enter from south-west?!
Or, will there be a connection from T1 ground floor straight into the "blue box" somehow?

r2d2

I remember reading there would be a new entrance to the railway station directly from the new buidling. It is also mentioned on the page of the architect firm that describes the expansion: "In addition to the terminal expansion, the competition area will also include plenty of other new construction. The new plaza and a new square by the secondary entrance of the train station will be the most important visual orientation points in the area."

intuition

OK, sounds good but it will be an interesting construction. The way I read the map, platform end it pretty close to T1 building, so getting an escalator to the plaza in front of the new entrance sounds challenging.

I wonder if a new escalator will connect to the level immediately above the tracks or in the main elevator shaft (which is pretty far east). Or if they'll just do a cheapy and build a under-passage from where escalators/elevators arrive in T1 - that will be a loooong walk.

r2d2

That must affect the ratings of the airport as well. Most of the "old" gates have a fair amount of seating around them and also power at some seats. The bus terminal (gates 50x) and the South Wing gates are much worse: not much seating and most of the seats available are uncomfortable wooden benches reminding of a prison gym or the dining hall in the military. I guess the Plaza and the West Wing will be similarly bad, making you feel like waiting at the airport has been made miserable on purpose.

intuition

Current course timetable shows areas under development

ffay005

I thought the 50 bus gates were a temporary solution. I wonder if they are here to stay after all.

What Finavia should do would be to demolish everything northeast of gate A1 and build a proper-width terminal instead. (A1 is maybe 27 or something nowadays, the first gate in the main transit hall from 1969. International gates used to be numbered A1-A6 (jetbridges) and A7-A10 (bus gates). Domestic gates, northeast of the international ones, were B1-B5.

intuition

Thanks for that great reference, I've often thougt about how to talk about that part of the airport - it is still iconic even though they manage to destroy it internally.

In my crazy vision they should convert it to a small departures and security hall, giving O/D passengers direct passage to non-schengen terminal. It could easily be fed by the ringlinje from the Datavägen exit if they did a north-going escalator.
Yeah, I know. Just as likely as they start calling non-schengen T2 and the schengen terminal T1. They want to keep the illusion there is only one terminal under one roof.

Anyway, they'll need the bus terminal for quite a while more.

ffay005

It's iconic! Must be the only airport in the world with parquet floors. And the high pressure laminate used on the jetbridges (and the old check-in islands) is unique to HEL, the pattern was specially designed for the airport. Some details remain if you know where to look – such as the solari board style clock in the old check-in hall.

I wonder what happened to the washrooms which you could enter via staircase somewhere opposite gates 28-29. They were located in the basement and were big! Now there are only small washrooms scattered here and there.

They definitely should add a direct entrance to the non-Schengen side. As well as an underground walkway from T1 to T2 non-Schengen, with immigration facilities underground. That would make many transfers a lot smoother.

ffay005

I wonder how seriously AY has considered introducing an early evening secondary wave for second dailies to primary Asian airports. A little surprisingly, to me at least, there already is a bunch of feeders to regional destinations if they scheduled longhauls arriving HEL at 18:40 and departing at 20:40. We know they would like to at least seasonally operate more flights to NRT, PVG and maybe PEK. In addition, they could maybe move the already existing seasonal second daily HKG to this wave.

In the present schedule, the 18:40 arrival would have connections to ARN, GOT, OSL and even LHR, CDG, BRU. If you accept a two-hour connection, you can add CPH and TLL to the list (or just reschedule them to leave HEL a little earlier and stay longer at the outstation if you want the inbound leg unchanged). RIX and VNO are the main regional airports missing from the list.

And with a 20:40 departure time for the longhaul, there would be feeders from all Scandinavian and Baltic airports in the present schedule. As a bonus, you can add CDG to the list as well.

The question is, of course, whether these combinations attract enough demand to fill those longhauls. But maybe it could work with primary destinations. Schedulewise, I think this later wave would be a lot more convenient. In Europe, you could work until lunch and then head for the airport, arriving in Asia noonish, so you can check in to your hotel pretty much immediately (as opposed to now, when you arrive very early in the morning, do not get into your room and are dead tired). On your way back, you wouldn’t have to rise before the sun to reach the airport, but could instead have a leisurely breakfast at your hotel and check out before noon. You’d reach home in the evening, ready for bed.

OH-LGG

AY101/102 is operated all year around. HKG's season is 12 months

ffay005

Oh, so it seems! But it's not daily (yet). Random dates for next February show five flights a week, though.

intuition

From reading some of the presentations they did before influx of new A350 started, it sounded like they were seriously looking through options with more waves.
But I think they dropped the idea.

"The Asian strategy" is a bit hazy IMO, but I guess the mantra "one new destination every year" wins over a second wave.

Personally, my priority would be daily year around on all destinations. There are few things more annoying when you want to go to a AY destination only to find that their season does not coincide with your...

r2d2

My guess is that their recent change to the A350 delivery schedule was because of plans to increase the midnight departure/early morning arrival wave. It requires two planes for a daily flight, so that's why they will get two new A350's a year.

There was a decision in March to extend the operating hours of Narita to 0530 am - 1230 am so it would be at least one candidate for this midnight wave.