miamiflyer8

So an AY Silver member or C passenger without status can sneak in to the Premium lounge thru the sauna?

heatsink

Yes, but foreigners won't go into the sauna and Finns won't go outside the box.

intuition

Easily. No need to even go to sauna, they only need to make their way to the shower section, which also acts as toilets.

cistavoda

New unofficial platinum perk?

warakorn

I do not understand the semantic meaning of this sentence.

riku2

If you go to the lounge at 430pm you'll find most of the guests look like they are heading for asia and I doubt they have finnair plus cards. So what will change around that time of the day?

it would be better if premium lounge = OWE, business lounge = OWS + J pax.

A lot of the time I get some food in the premium side then over to the J side for a bit more peace and quiet since it's bigger and feels less crowded.

riku2

have you counted up how many business seats there are departing from HEL in the afternoon from the non-schengen side? assuming the "premium" side was open to all business class pax (no economy pax admitted even with OWE) then the premium lounge would be filled about 2x over. Add in the OWE's in economy and there wouldn't even be standing room in the premium side.

Courmisch

They sure as hell do accept them. I've used mine too many times to remember. As a matter of facts, I don't even take my passport if I am not leaving Europe.

It would be but they don't do that.

Finnish banks are known to do more-or-less that: insists on passports instead of EU cards, and at least one of them was found guilty of some sort of discrimination.

ffay005

I can confirm this since I arrived 1:45 am on Tuesday morning from LHR at gate 37. While the (late) arrival in itself would hardly qualify as evidence, there were also some Asian pax sleeping on the seats in the non-Schengen area at that time. They wouldn't have been there had they closed the non-Schengen area. All shops and services were closed, though.

ffay005

Didn't this have something to do with the fact that Sweden did not have national ID cards issued by the state? The cards were issued by (private) banks etc and thus did not qualify as travel documents.

The Finnish national ID most certainly is a valid travel document to all EU countries, including those that are not members of the Schengen agreement. Moreover, some non-EU countries have decided to accept them as travel documents as well, including many Balkan countries.

ffay005

Don't know about this particular case, but the set reply to "But I've done this several times before and it was never a problem" is always "The rules have just recently changed".

I wonder if airlines train their personnel to simply lie to passengers to get rid of them, or if it's just a service industry habit.

skba1

The issuing body has been the Police for many years now (I think 1 OCT 2005). It used to be banks, the post and one more body, but that was discontinued when National ID cards were introduced. Previous versions were always just called ID cards.

Today National ID cards are issued by the Police, and "ID cards" issued to foreign nationals residing in Sweden, but those are issued by Skatteverket (Tax Authority/Inland Revenue). You cannot get an ID card issued by Skatteverket if you are a Swedish citizen anymore.

So between 2005 and 2015 there was no real legitimate reason why a Swede with a national ID card should not be able to leave the Schengen border in Sweden with a National ID card going to a destination where that would be accepted upon entry.

skba1

No, if you aren't traveling much to UK it would be a change that you most likely would never notice!

I lived in the UK for several years when this was still in practice, and got caught out twice (once by my fault, once by a delayed flight that meant I had no time to pick up my passport at home) at ARN having to get pink passports!

Usually I flew via CPH on SK (think of those extra points!), and could use the ID card, but then once I forgot I was flying direct and had my passport lying in the UK when getting to check in at ARN for ARN-LHR...

Anyway, I am very happy they got their things together and updated that outdated 1974 passport act.

FFlash

Heyhey, now guys, you made my morning coffee in the wrong throat, cough

What a good idea to free up some space in the premium lounge, please report back intuition how it went!

Hartsa

If this happens we propably can read it in Iltasanomat first