BThumme

Im looking to make a trip to HEL and the surrounding area in December, and would like some advice. The longest flight I've ever been on was about a 4 hr red-eye SLC-CLT.

I would like to leave from GRR, but can do it from any Michigan airport or ORD if need be. A couple more details:

I would like to do it star alliance to credit them to Aegean, but any SAS/blue1 flight won't get me miles, and lufthansa/united segments minimum miles.

So I'm considering if foregoing miles in exchange for a better trip would be worth it. From what I've been looking at, leaving from GRR would put me through Toronto and Frankfurt, delta Amsterdam, air France through Paris, and most of the other carriers are more costly.

So I guess my real question is, as someone who loves to travel but has never flown internationally, what's the most enjoyable way to get to Helsinki.

Thanks!

Helsinki Flyer

AA direct from ORD to HEL or AY direct from YYZ to HEL. Both are out of Michigan, but direct flights. If I remember correctly they´re both seasonal, so might not work for you. If no direct flights are available try any with a single transfer, meaning you have to get to Chicago, Detroit or Toronto and change in FRA, AMS, LHR, CDG, CPH, ARN etc. Then you could also fly from your nearest airport to JFK to catch the AY flight to HEL. I´d rather take any of those than several stops around the country and risk missing flights etc in busy Christmas period and the usual weather at that time of the year.

RRDD

If your motivation is shorter flights, then route yourself through an East Coast airport (JFK, etc).

If your motivation is enjoyment, then do not route yourself through CDG.

What happens after you arrive in Helsinki? Are you staying there, or getting on the train?

GUWonder

Does the AA ORD-HEL even operate at the time of the year relevant to the OP? I don't recall either that or the AY YYZ-HEL flight being year-round, but I don't pay that much attention to YYZ TATL flights.

If I were the OP, I would do GRR to ORD (by air or ground) and then ORD to any one of the airports that have a Star Alliance flight to/from HEL while keeping in mind how flights will credit to his Star Alliance frequent flyer program of choice.

BThumme

From what I was looking at , the ORD-HEL is not operational in December, I saw it in October but not much later. I didn't see a YYZ-HEL flight either (or unless it was a lot more that I never even looked at it).

The purpose of the trip is to check out a couple Finnish hockey games, I think we were going to try to end up in Tampere, Hammeelinna, Pori, and maybe Turku.
I have no problems with longer flights or more stops as long as the cost doesn't increase a whole lot.

WHBM

The most straightforward way is to use the Finnair daily JFK to Helsinki flight, and to do a OneWorld connection from Detroit to New York (alas only to LGA so need to transfer), one Finnair ticket would cover this.

The Finnair flights from Toronto are summer only and are on Finnair's charter fleet 757, otherwise used on their holiday flights to the Canary islands, Thailand, etc. They operated these as charters to Toronto for many years, recently they have appeared as scheduled flights but are still on a charter-configured 757.

Hope for snow at Helsinki airport, they must be the best-equipped snow-clearing airport in the world, it's fascinating to watch it all going on from the big terminal windows. never an interruption to operations.