Finnair to reduce in-flight drinkservice
 

Though bad news, these are kind of charming. AY will no longer offer several brands of alcohol in economy class, but rather on brand per alcohol type. So when other European airlines are taking away just about everything, AY just takes away the choice. Something I as an eco-passenger certanly can live with :)

http://www.finnair.com/web/finnair/s...6&pageid=-8734

I've only flown AY twice and that was on the LGW-HEL route (in Y). The service was out of this world and my lasting memory will be of the fact that they seemed intent on drowning you in brandy after the meal service. :p

Here's the same URL without the "sessionID" so it should work for everyone:
http://www.finnair.com/web/finnair/s...6&pageid=-8734

You are right Tony, the amount of brandy and whiskey they manage to squeeeeeze into a glass is just mind bogling!
Next step for them (and SK for that matter) should be to go to an etiquete class somewhere (France) and learn how much brandy one should put in a glass. ;)

No, no no... They are just following the Nordic etiquette on that - they are Nordic based airline after all :D ;)

It wasn't the amount they put in that concerned me - it was the number of times the glass was refilled. I had a terrible cold and the cognac seemed to be acting as quite a good decongestant. I kept knocking them back, they kept filling up the glass. It's what you might expect up at the front, but on our £99 tickets it was brilliant (as was the service on that whole flight, btw).

Interesting that they were the only European Airline to rank in the top-10 (i think number 3) ranking of international FAs in a French business travel magazine that I picked up in one of the lounges. The rest were all asians. Finns do have their roots in Asia dont they....?

Woah, and we look so oriental anyway so that must be true :rolleyes:

Well, language-wise at least, Finnish (and Hungarian for that matter) has more to do with Asian than European languages.

Say what?!?

Sorry but, language-wise at least, this is complete bollocks.

Finnish and the other Finno-Ugric languages have neither more nor less 'to do' with Asian than with European languages.

cheers,

Henry
(M.A., Linguistics)

thread hijack in progress
 

OK, most people agree that the Finno-Ugric languages form a subfamily of the Uralic languages. And there are quite a few Uralic speakers east of the Urals (Samoedic languages), i.e. in Asia, let alone all the Ugric speakers like the Khanty and the Mansi.

Latest rumours tell that AY will discontinue the free drink (alcohol) service totally in Y later this year, June 1st was mentioned as the date. I have no facts to back this up but this is the general feeling among people who are supposed to have some sort of inside knowledge.

True. Beer and wine will remain free while whisky/cognac/liquor will not.

EU / US divide
 

One funny development on this issue. I have noticed on several USA based FF threads that they are complaining about all the drinking on EU carrier members of their alliances.

Have noticed this most on CO OP when complaining about the free-slowing booze on VA flight. They dont like Richard Bransons' marketing in the UK and feel it atracts the "wrong sort."

Just another in the long list of growing cultural divides between the US and EU. ;)

I travelled HEL-CDG a couple of days ago on AY A321. Although delayed, the flight was great with friendly FAs, decent hot food and comfortable seats. The new drink service was noticable in that they couldn't serve a G&T in economy..