Jainzar

A note from my flight from D to FIN. We had a occupancy of around 60% in J according to the AY seatmap the day before. Also my seat assignment changed some days before so that I was supposed to sit next to someone else.

To my surprise when boarding the plane occupancy was around 25% in J, leaving plenty of space. Probably many „tourists“ changed/cancelled their flights on last minute.

WilcoRoger

With current level of traffic it makes sense to keep it closed.

SPBanker

RIX, waiting for AY1078. Primeclass Business Lounge. Nature is healing.

NoWindowSeat

One smaller reason could be the seasonal Thai workers who come to Nordic / Northern Europe every summer

OH-LGG

This year they are not coming. Thailand does not allow seasonal workers leave Thailand when destination is Finland or Sweden.

Does any European country allow Thai citizens to entry?

Ed Size

The EU in general allows it since 1st of July, but countries can make up their own rules. In Germany Thais are welcome since yesterday.

You ll find the countries which are fine for the EU here:

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/p...ird-countries/

NoWindowSeat

Wasn’t this still open..? But if Thai gov doesn’t allow them to leave..then of course not but I thought Thailand was on EU safe list?

ffay005

VNO-HEL 17 pax. (They had 50 pax on the outbound today!)

Airport experience nice at VNO. No queue to Priority check-in. Fast track was available at security, but there was no queue on the regular side so I saved AY some money and took the regular queue Duty Free open, lounge open, lounge had prepacked salads (both in glass bottles and in disposable bowls), sandwiches, cakes, drinks etc.

Gate agent read the announcement about boarding by groups and then, in practice, let everyone board without any enforcement. FAs did not even read the deboarding by row numbers -announcement, did they get rid of that now or did they just not care?

Apparently flights from "safe" countries arrive at 2B via a door I had never used before. Not the one where the bus drives under the footbridge between the old and "new" terminal, but a door just below gate 28 on the apron side. No passport control.

I'm getting so tired of that man who, every two minutes or so, reads the Hyvät matkustajat announcement that I'm considering hacking the system and replacing it with "Hyvät matkustajat, kaikkia Suomeen rajatarkastuksen kautta palaavia matkustajia velvoitetaan hyppimään yhdellä jalalla kahden tunnin ajan sekä välttämään omaehtoista wc:ssä käyntiä viikon ajan..." or something similar.

FFlash

Spot on. Do it
just normal military style rule dummy.

James91

I did LHR-HEL last week and it was 95% full. Obviously no social distancing or seats left free, but the wipes given out were useful, and I enjoyed my bottle of water and cookie /s.

jann3

Life goes on @hel.... just had the first AY-lounge brunch since March. Offerings were limited and I count about five customers, when I visited there just before the morning closure. I'm not complaining at all. It was a pleasure to visit there for a long time!

(FYI: Alcohol available from 9am only.)

EuroFlash

Surprisingly enough a hot meal was offered on AMS-HEL today (even though AMS is not being mentioned on the list of routed with “restored” service, and CS telling me there would only be a sandwich on board in July and August.

Flight was 80% full and the domestic flight that followed about the same.

Boarding in reversed order. Extra busses were utilized to maintain social distancing to bring pax to the ATR.

Arrived in Schengen area but border checks by Raja now happen at the gate for domestic flights. Everyone gets checked. Those arriving from abroad or without a Finnish passport get additional questions.

Also the lounge in HEL looked amazing, it’s getting busier and busier these days.



Absolutely deserted Schiphol airport

Potatoes and cordon blue with veggies inflight

Falafel and chicken lasagna in the HEL lounge

Other items in HEL lounge

lkrt

I have no doubt that AMS was simply forgotten from the published list and CS only reads this list, too.

Flying Yazata

Such a sad looking buffet. Where's all symmetry and neatness? Especially with so few items, it really stands out as messy. Of course also the number of options is pretty dire, but that's just so tacky/amateurish.

(Yeah, back to normality in FT commentary as well. )

Tuvv

Flew ay1019 HEL-TLL today, arrived at HEL around noon for 13.40 departure. nobody in line for security, but really picky, had to dig out everything that contained a battery for separate scanning. I don´t remember it being that picky before, though I haven´t been through security at HEL since march so I might just not remember..? some kind of construction going on at the bottom of the prio security escalator airside, did not look like it will be finished in a day or two... guessing we will wait for priority security for a while...
Lounge ofcourse closed at that time of the day (door was open so I got a small bit of hope for about a second until i spotted the "closed" sign), went to pier zero and had some red wine. quite deserted still, at least in the early afternoon. Boarding was from gate 15 with walk over tarmac. the agent announced boarding by groups starting with group 1... 5 seconds later she announced all groups. with a grand total of 7pax, why even bother with the group thing?
bumpy flight, arrived 10 min early, even the purser said she found it unusually turbulent when we had a quick chat while waiting for the knock on the door.
can´t really complain about anything, would have been nice if the lounge would be open all day without the stupid 4 hour break in the middle.. but i guess that will come with time..