Good change(s) on AY website
 

I've noticed today, that the booking UI has been changed in the finnair.fi site. No more drop-down list of departure/destination cities, but you enter either the 3 letter code or the city name. The "return from a different city" works now as it should, not only from the same country (ie. HEL-VIE//BUD-HEL is now bookable on finnair.fi) You can also book non-AY OW destinations, like HEL-AMM ^ (AY/RJ combination, but no AY/MA combination)

Well done AY!

Works fine in other Finnair websites, too.

Agree, very welcome improvement

^

Information from Finnair
 

Reservations available to other oneworld flights through the Finnair Internet site

Now it is possible to make reservations to flights operated by other oneworld airlines on Finnair’s Internet site www.finnair.com. This enhancement increases the number of city pairs considerably, up to 160,000.

In the first phase reservations can be made on flights operated by other oneworld partners and their subsidiaries only in connection with a Finnair flight. Reservations on other oneworld flights to and from Australia, North and South America are at this stage only possible in combination with an intercontinental Finnair flight.

The booking engine also shows the oneworld flights in all 11 language versions of the Finnair website; however, the fare rules of oneworld flights only in English. In the fields for departure and destination city you may enter either the name of the city, the three-letter code of the city or the name of the country, in which case the system gives as alternatives all oneworld destinations in that country.

Seat maps are also shown for all flight segments and, depending on the airline, seats may be reserved online. At departure from Finland, payment is possible also through the Internet banking, in addition to credit cards.

The confirmation sent by e-mail includes for example information about baggage allowances for each flight segment.

No so fast. Why did Finnair decided to only allow city codes and not airport codes? So for instance if I enter LHR & PEK it finds nothing (it expects LON and BJS). Every other site I use allows airport codes, but Finnair has to do it differently, doesn't it :mad:

Finnair is not alone with this absurdity. At least Blue1 does the same, it's PAR and not CDG on both sites.

NYC, BUH, TYO, OSA, LON, ROM, SHA are among those new citycodes we have to get used to deal with. I always knew that YYZ is Toronto but now it's YTO.

Some (Finnish) travel agent's websites don't accept codes at all, only city names. Then go figure if it's Riga or Riika, Tukholma or Stockholm (differs from site to site)

I was positively surprised that AY now has fares out of AKL ^
But they route via HKG on CX and require an overnight stay and total travel time goes up to +35hrs :td:
So I guess we won't be taking that route anytime soon.

I'm looking to combine a QF AKL-BKK and AY BKK-HEL for our next trip, does anyone have any hints on where to get the best prices for BKK-HEL in C?

Earlier this week, prices ex-LHR was MUCH cheaper than ex-HEL, to all Asian destinations in C with AY.

Worth a detour?

:cool:

Agree that they should accept airport codes rather than city codes. And it doesn't work completely well either.

Entering STO on the Swedish site the search function decides to check the country name first and finds Great Britain (Storbritannien). After entering three (3) letters the first thing should be to search the 3-letter code.

But overall it is a positive change.

IMO it should accept both. When flying to NYC or London, I might not be that much interested which airport they serve, but also I might. It's not a real issue for AY, which AFAIK serves only one airport/city, but other carriers DO serve several airports in the same locality.

LH accepts both LON and LHR/LCY/whatnot

It probably would be but I'm looking to fly into Europe not from there so the detour would be a mighty long one!
Still looking for a good website to buy BKK-HEL AY C tickets!

The detour may work this direction, too. If BKK is too high, try BKK-HKG-HEL or BKK-ICN-HEL on any site (I often use expedia) This works well for me Eur->Asia, when the final destination is Japan (usually i/o NRT-HEL I take NRT-HKG/ICN-HEL-(TLL) - same price in C as ex-HEL in Y) Alternatively BKK-(HEL)-TLL or ARN might be cheaper too (and a one way TLL-HEL would set you back some 50-80 eurs)

Starting ex-LHR means a possibility to accumulate miles on BA both getting there and away, likewise BKK-HKG if travelling CX. BKK-ICN is more troublesome in aspects of OW miles, unless you make a larger detour BKK-NRT-ICN on JL or BKK-HKG-ICN with CX.

More is less!

:cool:

I booked a flight from London to Ekaterinburg (SVX) 6 days ago, using the UK version of the Finnair website (www.finnair.co.uk, I think)
I entered the codes as LON and SVX (the airport code for Ekaterinburg)
In each case it came up with a suggestion (I think 2 for LON) that I clicked on to confirm.
I always use LON for London, because I don't really care which airport I fly from.
In Ekaterinburg, there is only one airport - and only 1 international terminal.
So I always use SVX.

So at least some of the Finnair websites accept airport codes. :)
Maybe in cities with one airport it is the same thing?

Anyway, all the choices come up on the booking.
I use ITA to find out what routings are available, then I just look for the same days, times and flight numbers.
(ita isn't perfect for pricing though - I got my flights from finnair UK for about 35 GBP less than the ita quote)