intuition

I think the point being made is that if an airline wants to fly with passengers onboard from day1 of lifted restrictions, they need to guess when that will happen, because you can't ramp up operations and sales with zero advance notice.

ffay005

I can't find the topic anymore, browsed three of these covid-related topics... But there was someone asking whether Greek island airport staff would know AY rules regarding vaccination certificates. Well, here's first hand experience from RHO. Not the right island, and also not even the first flight of the season, but stil...

Three desks, one Priority (!), one Baggage Drop (what for, as no one has a BP?) and one regular. About 20 Finns in line. Agents said that the vaccination certificate is not good enough if you've only gotten one shot, and they didn't know how to read the dates on the certificate, either, mixing up month and day. When I arrived, they had been arguing with one older lady, apparently for a while. I went to the desk and asked her what it was all about and then told the agent that if this is how it's going to be, the plane will leave empty This was, purposefully, overheard by most people in the queue, who murmured in agreement, to my delight.

They finally called somewhere and did a lot of that Greek thing where they seem to be doing a lot, but don't really do anything... And then they printed the lady a BP and proceeded to check me in with no complaints about my one-shot certificate.

So, be prepared for anything, but it pays off to be persuasive.

Agent said there will be 30 pax on the flight. We'll see. But if that is the case, then no wonder they keep cancelling flights.

ffay005

Yeah, about 30 pax. And guess what, WiFi doesn’t work. So now we have OH-LVI and LVL with no WiFi.

Do any of the remaining A319 actually have WiFi?

Im a new user

Incompetent staff can be expensive. If they hadn't allowed you to board. then AY would have had to pay many times €400 and maybe also provide a hotel room, depending on when they would have been able to rebook everyone.

Looking at Flightradar24, I see that OH-LVL (is that your flight?) is making a long western detour to avoid a diversion to MSQ in the event that any dissidents would be on the flight.

LoungeEnthusiast

Worked on LVH today.

florens

This is exactly my fear about travel in the future and it's annoying. I'm really not in the mood to have to tell people who are supposed to be in the know about what the rules actually are.

YMMV.

OH-LGG

After several months of painful ATR torture to OUL, what is happening



After all this it's almost like a widebody.

parrukeisari

After a lengthy break of taking the train to HEL I flew KUO-HEL last night and also HEL-MUC this morning.

I arrived at KUO absolutely parched due to the weather, dropped off the bag and proceeded to security. Once through I noticed the café was closed (expected as much), there was not even a vending machine in the terminal. They did serve water and mustikkamehu on the flight though, but no coffee. The inbound flight from HEL looked like it was packed, it was nice to see some action at KUO. The departing flight was approximately half way full.

The terminal was packed and the queue to the security was a good 25 minutes. No priority security, obvs.



The que did shorten quite a bit during that time though. Judging by the clothes some people were wearing, today's socceer game in St.Petersburg had probabaly a lot to do with the queue.

HEL-MUC was an improvement (HAH!), there was elovena cookies and coffee too! When arriving at MUC the bus from AY1401 arrived at the terminal at the same time as the bus from LH2467 flight from HEL, I recognised some of the people in the security queue. If this trip didn't get me over the threshold for AY+ gold I would've definitely taken the LH2467.

ffay005

Would anyone have firsthand experience of WAW/BUD arrivals? There was a WAW arrival today to gate 21, which is on the "domestic" side and baggage claim is shown as 2A. So appararently, these flights use the "domestic" side?

parrukeisari

Flights from Schengen area will arrive at the gate, true, but the plane will be deboarded onto a bus via the rear exit so it's covid queue and border control per usual.

Edit: Oh, right. Baggage hall 2A. disregard what I said, i'm an ididot.

OH-LGG

Yes, Hungary and Poland are category "normal border control" so no passport check.

dparkinson

Does anyone know what the menu is ex-JFK these days? I only see Asian destinations posted on the website. I assume there’s no bowl of hot nuts/PDB anymore.

lkrt

Happy to see that many destinations are upgauged to A32S, at least MXP, BER, CPH.

Abducted Alien

My spouse told me that on AY1725 flight to Alicante with A321S (fully booked), the purser and crew told many times to the passengers that it is really nice to see you all after long time. On the J my spouse drinking glasses were constantly filled up, the service was very good during flight and hot breakfast in J was good too. Only security control at HEL was packed with long lines and just couple of lines open.

RobHK

I have booked my summer trip to Europe finally: HKG-HEL-ARN and then back to HKG two weeks later. I have about 1h20m for the transfer in HEL, pre-covid this was plenty of time. Should I be worried now with all the extra procedures that it will be tight to make it? Anything I can do to prepare (papers etc) to speed up the process?

I also saw that HEL-ARN is running a 2+2 seat airplane. What's up with that, I thought travel was back on between Sweden and Finland?