Finnair A330 Business Class (AirLounge) Review: Helsinki to New York JFK

Rating: 4.5/5 (Great food and service, but not as comfy a ride as the A350)

Route: HEL-JFK (depart 5:15PM arrive 7:05PM)

Price: 85,000 Alaska Mileage Plan Miles + $67 (note: this is the price for both my previous flight from Phuket to Helsinki AND this flight – that’s basically 24 hours in business class, which is why I love Alaska miles so much)

Introduction

For my final leg home after my Southeast Asia trip, I was flying again on Finnair, this time on the older plane in their long haul fleet (A330). I had a one day layover and a bit of time to explore Helsinki, and then it was time to head back home to NYC.

I had flown their Business Class from Phuket to Helsinki just the day before, but on their A350. The hard product (and soft product, at least in my experience) was functionally identical, in that both were extremely good. However, the A330 definitely shows its age vs the A350, but more on that later.

In this post, you’ll find:

Getting to the Airport

Helsinki airport is technically in the city of Vantaa, which is just north of Helsinki. It’s still relatively quick to get to from downtown Helsinki. In terms of transit, you have two options:

1. Take a taxi / uber. This will run you 30-50 euros and take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on traffic and time of day
2. Take the train from Helsinki Central Station. This was super easy and cheap (5 euros), and takes around 50 minutes. I always travel light with a carry-on only, so the car was not needed here and I opted for the train.

If taking the train, you can just purchase tickets day-of (or as I did, minutes before) at the station. There are machines on the platform where you can purchase ticket, and you can just hop on any train that has an airplane logo next to it on the boarding screens.

Ground Experience & Lounge at Helsinki Airport

The ground experience at Helsinki airport is extremely good (business class or otherwise). I’d argue this is one of the best-designed airports out there, in that it’s just one big terminal. To be fair, Helsinki airport probably has the perfect amount of traffic where it can pull this off while still being an international hub without the need to build other terminals for extra capacity. Needless to say, the airport itself is extremely nice and efficient, probably my favorite airport in all of Europe.

Here’s the main check-in hall at the airport:

Towards the right side in the back, there’s a separate area for Finnair priority, which is basically anyone with Finnair status, flying Finnair business class or is a oneworld elite.

I already had my mobile boarding pass, so I just went straight through the priority area, where there’s fast-tracked security before heading to the gates. There was pretty much zero line today for security, in both the priority and regular areas.

After getting through security, I made my way towards the Finnair Business Class Lounge, which is located by gate 52. I review this lounge in detail in my previous post, but to summarize – it’s just ~alright. There’s decent food and drink, but that’s about it. It’s definitely not worth coming to the airport early for, and I kind of wish I had just spent more time walking around downtown Helsinki.

Here are some pictures of the lounge:

Even if you don’t have lounge access, don’t worry – Helsinki airport is extremely nice. There’s great food, seating, and natural light everywhere, which honestly I would have preferred at times to being in the dark lounge.

Boarding & Finnair’s A330 (vs A350)

Soon enough, it was time to board. Interestingly, they open up what basically feels like human chicken pen around 30 minutes before actual boarding, where they scan everyone’s ticket. Once in here, you can’t really leave, and you just sit here. Kinda strange. They split the waiting areas into two groups: priority (business class or premium economy) and then regular (economy).

After ~30 minutes of waiting in the chicken pen, business class was allowed to board.

Finnair currently has 8 A330-300s in operation. All of them were delivered in the 2009 / 2010 window, so are all decently-aged aircraft at this point. The A330 in their current configuration current holds 279 passengers across 3 classes:

28 Business Class AirLounge seats built by Collins Aerospace, just for Finnair (this is the seat I’ll be flying on this flight)

21 Premium Economy Seats (Haeco Vector Premium seats)

230 Economy seats (with some extra legroom seats), all on the Haeco Vector seat

Here’s a detailed seat map. My seat for today was 7L, at the very back right of the business class cabin. This ended up being a poor choice of seat, but more on that later.

Business Class Seat Review

The seat itself is identical to the one I reviewed previously on the A350 on my flight the day before. It’s custom built by Collins Aerospace, just for Finnair. I wish other airlines would adopt this product, but it’s probably too unique and risky for larger carriers to adopt vs the tried and true reverse herringbone play. All-in-all though, it’s probably one of my favorite business class products out there.

What makes the seat unique is there’s no recline feature. You can still lie flat, but the way to do it is you can flip up your footrest to create a fully lie-flat bed.

Here was my seat for today, 7L in the very back of the business class cabin:

One thing I’d advise against is choosing seat 7L, specifically because there’s almost no window. The A330 windows are noticeably smaller than the A350, and 7L’s window is basically where your feet are. So if you like staring out the window (me) and don’t want neck pain, would avoid the window seats in row 7.

All the seat controls are here (of which there aren’t many, because the seat barely has any moving parts):

And one of my favorite features that’s available on flights more broadly now is wireless charging. This makes the whole untangling wires process unnecessary and makes sure you’re topped off on battery before getting to your destination.

Pre-Departure Service & Takeoff

For pre-departure service, amenity kits were already stocked and waiting at all business class seats. The kit is pretty minimal and doesn’t have a lot, but at this point I honestly don’t care at all about amenity kits to be honest since I rarely bring them anyways (unless I really like the bag itself to use for my toiletries in the future). For the kits, Finnair partners with Marimekko, a nice Finnish brand.

For pre departure service, menus were handed out and the flight attendants took our meal orders. I of course, got another Blueberry juice, because when else am I going to get blueberry juice on a plane (minus the day prior on Finnair).

Soon enough we off on this cloudy February day in Helsinki:

Flight and Service Review

Around 30 minutes after takeoff, mood lighting was switched on and our meal service began.

For food, here was today’s menu:

I opted for the smoked rainbow trout, which was legitimately the best fish I’ve ever had on a plane. I’m not sure if I just got lucky with my two flights but Finnair’s food was probably some of the best plane food I’ve ever had in my life, period.

At this point in the trip I was coming down with some sort of cold, so I just slept for pretty much the entirety of this flight. Even though this flight was shorter than my previous, the cabin was definitely noticeable drier and less comfortable due to the worse cabin humidity and internal pressure of the A330 vs the newer A350. At least the seat was super comfortable. And to be fair, it I hadn’t rode the same exact seat the day prior, it probably wouldn’t have been so stark to me.

Our second meal was served around 2 hours before landing in NYC. I opted for the Tortellini, which came with Rye bread and of course, another blueberry juice. This was also really good (although presentation here was a bit sloppy).

Also, another thing to call out was the service was once again, really warm and friendly. European carriers generally can be quite hit or miss (not to generalize, but I’m generalizing) but so far I’m 2/2 on Finnair.

Flying westward, we were lucky with departure timing and time of year, which meant we were chasing the setting sun pretty much the entire flight, even as we approached NYC:

Conclusion

This made for a great concluding flight to an awesome Southeast Asia trip, which was pretty much entirely funded by miles.

I’d happily choose Finnair again in the future, mostly because (1) I love their seats (2) They are the only ones with these seats and (3) They seem to have food and service really well put-together, at least in my experiences with them. If you have a choice, I’d obviously opt for the A350 vs the A330 for a better cabin experience, but that’s probably splitting hairs at the point and is very much a first world problem.

Back to starting at spreadsheets for awhile to make up for the credit card damage I’d inflected to myself on this trip (although again, made much affordable with miles – budgeting guide to come next).