Recapping our Europe adventure (First points trip in J)

[aaa99]

Hello!

After a while lurking on other trip reports, I thought I will put one together myself as those inspired me to plan our trip
This trip was meant to happen in 2020, but for all reasons, we finally got a chance to do it in 2022.

The plan was to make use of our built up balances of Krisflyer and Alaska miles to get to Europe and back in J during April. We had never flown long haul J or used points to book reward seats in the past. So, it was all new for us. We started planning this on Nov 1 when Australia's borders reopened to outbound travel, but as things changed with borders, we had to be flexible and change our plans.

Based in MEL, we had booked SQ J to CDG via SIN with a return on CX using Alaska miles (as two separate tickets). This was very optimistic of us as HK was still not allowing transits on 2 separate tickets at the time. The final nail on this plan was when HK stopped any transits from Australia

We then changed to JL using QF points to get to FRA via NRT and found return flights on SQ. This looked very promising for about 2 months. Then in February, JL cancelled their Melbourne flights which took us back to the drawing board. Eventually we settled on using Alaska miles on Finnair from SIN to CDG via HEL. This meant getting a Scoot positioning flight to SIN but, this was not too bad. We allowed ourselves 24 hours in SIN as at the time, it was necessary to get an arrival test and isolate for 24 hours.

Anyway, enough talk. Here are some photos of the first leg to SIN.

Some interesting additions to the duty free area. Most shops were still reopening on April 1.


Tried out the Amex Lounge at Melbourne.
They have done it up recently, but the food options were limited and maybe because they only recently re-opened, not refilled and left empty.



SCOOT 787 9V-OJH (Fernweh) taking us to SIN.


Booked the Scoot in silence seats for $30 more and almost had the whole cabin to ourselves. The main economy cabin was pretty full.


It was a bit annoying to see one of our original bookings (JL) parked right next to us, but I assume it was cargo only?


Nothing much to add about the flight, but we arrived in SIN pn time and Changi looked so empty like this. Obvisouly lots has changed since then.



We just used the capsule hotel in the Jewel to stay overnight and get ready for the next flight.
That concludes part 1, I will add our Finnair Air Lounge experience in the next post.

 

[aaa99]

So, we had 14 hours to kill in Changi. We thought we could catch some sleep before our flight.
But, we got a rude wake up as the works at Changi airport meant that there were loud noises. Atleast the capsule hotel, Yotelair was kind to let us use another room (which also had the same problem actually). So, they let us use the room for as long as we wanted (we had only booked it for 6 hours).

This helped actually as Changi Airport didnt have early check in options for Finnair. I remember previously being able to do this, but I saw all the early check-in counters were closed. We spent the day exploring Changi which is never boring.

The Jewel Changi's indoor water fall - always a sight to behold


Temporary Pokemon store at Jewel.


Some Changi wildlife


Also managed to sneak out on the MRT to meet some friends.

 

[aaa99]

We arrived back at the airport about 4 hours before the flight, but the check in counters only opened 3 hours prior, so we went for a wander to T3 and tracked our flight arriving from Helsinki.

Sorry about the quality of some of these images which are screencaps from videos.
OH-LWD arriving as AY131 from HEL - SIN. Does anyone know why the windows at T3 cant be clear? It will make for such good plane spotting.


Soon, we were checked in. Not much queue in either economy or business check-in lines.


At check-in, we were welcomed to use the Marhaba lounge, but we decided to check out the QF one instead which seemed like a better choice.


This was our first time in the QF Singapore lounge. I wasn't expecting it to be this big, but it makes sense considering they also fly to London from here (soon). It was pretty quiet at the time.


There was a variety of food and drink options and the staff were quite friendly. The lounge closed at 9:30pm which could be a problem for later OW flights. In this case, the Marhaba lounge might be the only option as the other OW lounges were still closed at the time.




We tried not to eat too much to make the best of our Finnair experience. Oh wait, didn't Finnair just ask us to take some snacks on board?

 

[love_the_life]

Reading with interest - any TR is exciting

 

[drron]

Love reading TRs and this is a good start. Good on you for starting traveling again earlier than most of us.

 

[craven morehead]

Agree with @drron don't mind flying AY myself

 

[ellen10]

Looking forward to following along with your trip report.

 

[burmans]

I have an AY flight coming up in a few months so following with interest

 

[aaa99]

Ok, now to the fun part. We made our way to gate D32 to see this A359 parked up.
I always find the dark sunshades of the A350s very cool although it was night time

Just another +1 to SIN for having security at the gates. Makes it so much more efficient.
OH-LWD (Age 6.4 yrs)


The boarding call was done strictly in the order of the groupings and we made our way on to the aerobridge. It was all very exciting considering it was our first ever J long haul flight. I did record a lot of videos and plan on putting it up on Youtube. Dont mind sharing a link if it is of interest.

First things first, the cabin felt very new after the refresh and there were several others taking pictures of the interiors. Here are some pictures of the seat and the cabin. The boarding music was the same as the one in the new seat adverts which gave it good connect. I was in 8L which is the last seat in the forward cabin, but do note it has 1 less window than the others.





Nice view from 8L, but one less window. Paper menus and Marimekko amenities.


View of the forward J cabin


Storage compartment on the seat with headphones and ports for charging your devices. (There is also the wireless charging pad as per above picture). Unfortunately, the charging points and inflight camera didnt work on my seat. Crew were also flying the aircraft for the first time and didnt know how to fix this. They did offer to change me to an aisle seat, but I didnt really want to let go of the window.


Pre-flight drink (Finnair's signature blueberry) in Iittala glassware. Is anyone else here a fan of this glass? It sent us on a mad chase through Europe to find them.
P.S. If you want to get them, pre-order it 3 days before the flight on Finnair's website

The seats didn't have doors, but had really good privacy due to the shape of the shell.


And with that it was time for take-off.

 

[craven morehead]

Ok, now to the fun part. We made our way to gate D32 to see this A359 parked up.
I always find the dark sunshades of the A350s very cool although it was night time

Just another +1 to SIN for having security at the gates. Makes it so much more efficient.
OH-LWD (Age 6.4 yrs)
View attachment 276615

The boarding call was done strictly in the order of the groupings and we made our way on to the aerobridge. It was all very exciting considering it was our first ever J long haul flight. I did record a lot of videos and plan on putting it up on Youtube. Dont mind sharing a link if it is of interest.

First things first, the cabin felt very new after the refresh and there were several others taking pictures of the interiors. Here are some pictures of the seat and the cabin. The boarding music was the same as the one in the new seat adverts which gave it good connect. I was in 8L which is the last seat in the forward cabin, but do note it has 1 less window than the others.

View attachment 276645

View attachment 276616

Nice view from 8L, but one less window. Paper menus and Marimekko amenities.
View attachment 276617

View of the forward J cabin
View attachment 276619

Storage compartment on the seat with headphones and ports for charging your devices. (There is also the wireless charging pad as per above picture). Unfortunately, the charging points and inflight camera didnt work on my seat. Crew were also flying the aircraft for the first time and didnt know how to fix this. They did offer to change me to an aisle seat, but I didnt really want to let go of the window.
View attachment 276640

Pre-flight drink (Finnair's signature blueberry) in Iittala glassware. Is anyone else here a fan of this glass? It sent us on a mad chase through Europe to find them.
P.S. If you want to get them, pre-order it 3 days before the flight on Finnair's website
View attachment 276638
The seats didn't have doors, but had really good privacy due to the shape of the shell.
View attachment 276639

And with that it was time for take-off.

Yep, I bought 4 sets of the glasses last time for gifts. Pre-ordered on the plane and picked up 4 days later on next AY flight.

 

[burmans]

Yep, I bought 4 sets of the glasses last time for gifts. Pre-ordered on the plane and picked up 4 days later on next AY flight.

Approximate price?

 

[craven morehead]

Approximate price?

It was 2017 and to be honest I cannot remember sorry. Not cheap from memory but a great feel to them and well received. Designed to resemble melting ice IIRC.

 

[aaa99]

I remember them being around the 37EUR mark for a pair. Not cheap. There is also an Iitala store in Helsinki that sells them for the same price.

 

[aaa99]

Take off from SIN with a view of the A350's engine and wing. My flight camera wasn't working, but this is pretty good.

The menu had 3 options including one vegetarian option. We had to chose this before takeoff. Kind of wished we could decide to have our meal at a time later, but no option like that here.

Menus (they do give snacks )

Dinner served about 1 hour after take off, went for the seafood option which was decent. Again Iittala glasses and Marimekko cups (not seen here).


Cheese platter


Dessert (was welcomed to have all the cakes if i wanted to but went for the panacotta and it was pretty good)

 

[aaa99]

Got the chance to test out the seat after that. It is quite spacious and comfy. It doesnt recline, but the foot rests meet in the middle to transform into a bed. The crew were quite friendly and helpful. Considering the Singaporean accent of the crew, I tried to find out a bit more about them. Turns out the HEL-SIN sector is operated with a 3rd party crew that is based in Singapore. They dont work directly for Finnair, but wear the uniforms for this flight.

The couch/bed


I am not super tall (5.11) and found the space adequate to sleep in.


There is a little pillar in the corner that might come in the way for some people.


Got about 6 hours of sleep, and then stayed up from them onwards.
Breakfast service was a bit more limited, but still pretty good.

Marimekko tea cups


Breakfast in bed?


The 12.5 hours wents by pretty quickly and soon it was time to land. Finnair had some nice mood lighting as we got close to HEL.


There were some pretty nice views of the window as we approached HEL. It was -5deg and covered in snow. It was around this time my phone did some weird things and I lost a couple of videos, but here are some photos.

Flying over Estonia and Gulf of Finland


Snowy Helsinki


And just like that we arrived at HEL and it was actually pretty quiet in the Non-schengen area as all the flights had left. We had about 10 hours in Helsinki, so we checked out the Finnair Non-schengen lounge (which was basically empty) before heading out to the city.



Empty and well stocked Finnair lounge.

 

[RooFlyer]

Fabulous TR - I'm a big fan of AY. A bit more on the new recliner seats would be handy - you are the first here to use them, I think. HGow were they to sit up in? How was the transition to bed? Any lumps or bumps?

Is anyone else here a fan of this glass?

Yes! Bought them a decade ago after an AY flight.

They dont work directly for Finnair, but wear the uniforms for this flight.

That's a bit disappointing. I always found Finnish crews very engaging to talk to - can give local tips in Helsinki.

 

[aaa99]

Fabulous TR - I'm a big fan of AY. A bit more on the new recliner seats would be handy - you are the first here to use them, I think. HGow were they to sit up in? How was the transition to bed? Any lumps or bumps?

The transition was by making the leg rest and foot rest meet in the middle essentially forming a bridge between the ottoman and the seat . There was a button for the leg rest to move up and down, but the foot rest just had a lever to make it swivel up. We basically preferred having the seat in this position the whole time after take off.



We flew SQ J on the way back, so that is all I can compare with. The seat back was a bit thinner than SQ, but the curvature of the AY couch seat allows you to get into more comfortable positions. There was so lumps or bumps as far as I could tell. They did provide a mattress topper of some sort. The TV is also a nice big touch screen. Oh, the fold out table can be swiveled out of the way to get out of the seat which was nice.

Here is another angle looking over my partner's seat.

 

[aaa99]

Hello again, sorry for the long pause as I was busy with putting together the video.

Here is the continuation of the journey.

We spent 10 hours in transit at HEL.
Pretty Helsinki on a sunny but cold day (-3 deg C when we arrived)


Helsinki T2 was very modern and efficient.


Schengen Lounge was super busy. Stark contrast to the Non-schengen one. Tail was a nice touch.


Nice views out of the lounge (if you manage to get a seat).


View from seat 1A just before pushback


Snowy tarmac


More Iittala glass. The man setting behind was trying a lot to take one home for free


The dinner service. No options as such, we all got the same thing.
Prawn starter and indian curry with paneer for mains.


Finnish Vodka and some wine. The crew was very friendly and giving us lots of different things to try.

 

[aaa99]

Some nice views of CDG coming into land:


AF taking off on a parallel runway as we landed.


Not sure if this is allowed, but here is the link to a video trip report if you are interested:
SIN->HEL:

HEL->CDG:

P.S. Found below to be interesting. While connecting to the internet, Finnair was boasting about how their fleet to Asia can be rotated within 24 hours. We all know how that is going

 

[aaa99]

A long delay between posts, but I thought I should share the highlight of the trip for me personally as an Avgeek.

And that being Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg Germany (aka Avgeek nirvana).
Having been following them for 10+ years, I had to find a way to get here somehow on the Europe trip. Ended up taking an overnight bus from Amsterdam to cram it into the tight schedule. So here are some pictures from the visit.

The building is located in Speicherstadtk known for its architecture style.

And we went straight up to Level 2 for the Knuffingen airport. It is the world's largest model airport. This is the main terminal modeled on Hamburg airport.


Another look at the terminal


Apart from the planes themselves that move on a schedule (yes, there is a departure board), there are the tow tugs, the buses, luggage carts and food trucks that move around the airport all automatically.



The aircraft get pushed back and taxi along a dedicated taxiway for their turn.

Then, they take off and land guided on an invisible sled with guide rods.


The airport also had its own metro station where departures were shown and passengers were waiting with their luggage.


And ofcourse a control tower


The lighting cycles simulating night and day times.


Despite watching a lot of videos on Youtube, we still found it captivating.