Finland’s flag carrier, Finnair, turns 100 today.
If you’re flying, keep an eye out for special celebratory events.
In the meantime, here are some short videos celebrating the airline’s history and a fun Moomin character livery makeover.
Finnair
Greetings from: Helsinki
Snaps from Finnair’s Inaugural Flights from SEA to HEL
Finnair is the latest new international carrier to serve Stuck at the Airport’s home base airport in Seattle.
We were delighted to hop on the inaugural flight from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) to Helsinki Airport (HEL).
And, yes, we love that we can tell people we can now fly directly from Seattle to HEL(L).
Flights to SEA to HEL now operate three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, using an Airbus A330.
Here are a few more snaps from the gate celebration on June 1, some of the inflight amenities, and a few places we visited early in our Helsinki visit.
Thanks to Finnair for taking us along.
Souvenirs from the inaugural flight include cookies and luggage tags. For some passengers we met in the gate area before the flight, these were the only clues that they had booked seats on new service from SEA.
Combined with the champagne or blueberry juice welcome drink and the Marimekko amenity kit for business class passengers, this was a very festive welcome.
SEA airport sent off this inaugural flight with two congratulatory cakes for the crew, which they generously shared with passengers.
In Helsinki
We’ll have more time to explore the airport on our way home but we are encouraged to see bright spaces and artwork greeting passengers on arrival at the recently-upgraded terminal.
Licorice in Finland
Salted licorice (salmiakki) is a popular treat in many Nordic countries and a ‘you love it or you hate it’ treat for visitors from other countries. The StuckatTheAirport.com team loves it. And we were pleased to find a candy store not far from our hotel filled with licorice varieties we’d never seen or tasted before.
Helsinki Attractions
We’ll share more photos over the next few days, but with charming guides from Visit Helsinki, a group of Seattle-area journalists has been roving around the town.
Rock Church
Temppeliaukio Church is, understandably, one of Helsinki’s major tourist destinations because this Lutheran Church was carved out of solid rock, lined with copper, and covered with a UFO-like dome.
Helsinki’s central library – Oodi
Helsinki’s Central Library – Oodi – has books, of course. But this sprawling, welcoming space also serves as a community center and resource palace with everything from an outdoor terrace and cafes, to work and meeting spaces, recording studios with loaner instruments, play areas for kids, 3-D printing stations, sewing machines, and seemingly anything you might want to use or try out.
We love the spiral staircase, a work of art decorated with hundreds of words describing the wide variety of users that the public suggested the library should be dedicated to.
HELSINKI ART MUSEUM – HAM
The Helsinki Art Museum – HAM – is hard to miss with this giant seagull head outside. We’ve yet to make our way inside the building. But because about half of the 9,000 works of art in HAM’s collection are located in public spaces, we’re able to enjoy the museum’s offerings as we walk around town.
We’ll be back with more sites and spottings from Helsinki tomorrow.
(Photos by Harriet Baskas unless otherwise noted)
Travel Tidbits from SFO + Finnair +Indiana State Museum
SFO’s Wag Brigade Gets a Bunny
Most airports that had them before the pandemic have now brought back their teams of stress-busting therapy animals to the terminals.
A great example is SFO’s Wag Brigade, which is made up of about a dozen cute pups, a pig named LiLou, and the newest member of the team, a 28-pound Flemish Giant rabbit named Alex the Great. Look for them all next time you’re in SFO.
Finnair handing out Nort Pole Diplomas
Yes, even adults love getting a set of plastic wings when onboard some airplanes. But Finnair has brought back a cool amenity for travelers: a certificate for passengers who have flown over the North Pole.
Back in 1983, when Finnair became the first airline to fly non-stop from Europe to Japan, passengers on the carrier’s Tokyo flights were given a certificate for flying over the North Pole.
Now, Finnair is using that polar route again in order to avoid flying in Russian airspace. And the carrier has brought back the certificate – plus some Moomin stickers.
On March 9, flight AY073 from Helsinki to Tokyo Narita headed towards the North Pole, instead of heading East. With this flight, Finnair resumed its service to Tokyo Narita, skirting around Russian airspace that closed on February 28.
Where We’d Go: Indiana State Museum
Now that the Stuck at the Airport museum team is back in the field, we’re adding a stop to the Indiana State Museum to our list so we can see the exhibit about Major Taylor: Fastest Cyclist in the World.
How to join Finnair’s virtual reality flights to visit Santa
What does Santa do after he finishes all that hard work delivering presents on Christmas Eve?
He’ll go up the last chimney, climb into his sleigh, and make his way home to Rovaniemi, Lapland.
That’s the Christmas story Helsinki-based Finnair, “Santa’s official airline,” believes. And they’re backing it up with a series of eight virtual reality (VR) flights to visit Santa once he’s home.
Finnair’s VR flights are open for booking and take place between December 25th and December 30. The cost is €10 per person, or about $12. And all the profits will go to UNICEF’s fund to help children adversely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The immersive 360-degree virtual reality flights are created by Finnish VR studio Zoan and will be viewable on VR headsets, mobile phones, or laptops.
For these special flights, Finnair is giving all travelers virtual business class seats. And from that vantage point, it should be easy to look out the window and take in the starry skies and incredible views of the northern lights.
The VR experience also promises flight soundscapes, festive decorations, and, for those who have been nice and not naughty, a “glimpse of a familiar festive figure sitting in one of the other seats.”
Who could that be??
Once the virtual flight lands in Rovaniemi, Finnair says travelers will be able to virtually cross the Arctic Circle and visit Santa in his cabin.
If you show and he find him sleeping after his long night out, please don’t wake him up.
Fashion show on an airport runway? Yes.
A while back, Helsinki Airport and Finnair turned an airport runway into a skatepark.
That worked out so well, they’re doing it again:
On May 24, Finnair and Helsinki Airport (HEL) will host Runway 2 – a fashion show featuring work by top designers from around the world presented on an airport runway.
The event is a Match Made in HEL and will feature the work of yet-to-be announced fashion designers from China, Korea, Japan, the UK, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
Sounds like great fun. Especially if the planes landing and taking off that day use the other runway…
Now it’s all about Santa’s trip
Now that all that turkey business is over with, it’s time to start watching the skies for Santa.
NORAD – the North American Aerospace Defense Command – is already on the job with its NORAD Tracks Santa website, which has a holiday countdown, games, activities, Santa data and more in eight languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Chinese.
Leaving no Santa-tracking stone unturned, NORAD is also tracking Santa with apps in the Windows, Apple and Google Play stores, on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+.
Why does NORAD track Santa?
The story goes that in 1955 a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement misprinted the telephone number for children to call Santa. The phone number put kids through to the desk of the Continental Air Defense Command (NORAD’s predecessor) Commander-in-Chief instead and that man, Colonel Harry Shoup, played along and gave kids updates on Santa’s progress.
A tradition was born and now, using the internet and a team of volunteer elves, the whole world can check on Santa via NORAD’s satellites and Santa cams.
NORAD isn’t the only organization tracking Santa this season. Finnair, which claims to be the official airline of Santa Claus since 1983, has two of its Airbus 321 Sharklet aircraft flying with Christmas livery.
The airline also is also sharing this “secret of Christmas” video.
Frying with Finnair to the UN Climate Summit
Smell that?
The Airbus A330 making Tuesday’s Finnair flight from Helsinki to New York will be running on biofuel partly made from recycled cooking oil from restaurants.
It’s perfectly safe – and Finnair and several other airlines have done it before – but this flight is designed to coincide with the UN Climate Summit taking place in New York and draw attention to the fact that progress is being made on developing environmentally sustainable biofuel.
As Finnair reminds us, “most of an airline’s environmental impact arises from aircraft emissions during flight and switching to a more sustainable fuel source can reduce net CO2 emissions by between 50 and 80 per cent.”
But while everything from used cooking oil to plants, algae, municipal waste, recycled vegetable cooking oil, animal fat and sugarcane have been considered or tested in aircraft in search of safe, alternative, sustainable biofuels, the cost to make that alternative fuel is still at least twice as much – or more – than conventional jet fuel.
But along with Finnair, other airlines, including KLM and Alaska Airlines, airport operators, manufacturers and a variety of governments around the world are working on ways to lower the costs of creating these alternative jet fuels.
So it’s possible that soon you’ll be flying on a jet burning fuel made with old frying oil too.
Airline amenity kits – part 2
Here’s part 2 of my round-up of cool, collectible airline amenity kits, originally produced for CNBC Road Warrior. See part 1 here.
A complimentary amenity kit filled with deluxe-sized, beauty, grooming and lifestyle products chosen by the sample-savvy folks at Birchbox is one of the perks included with JetBlue’s upgraded, coast-to-to-coast Mint service introduced in June, 2014. The kit content will change quarterly but the mix of premium sample items started off with everything from Benefit Cosmetics mascara in the women’s kit to Ernest Supplies Cooling Shave Cream in the kit for men.
Finnair offers business class passengers a minimalist, eco-friendly amenity kit that includes socks, an eye-mask and earplugs packaged in a brown paper envelope. A more elaborate, but equally-eco amenities kit, with items in a green tea or birch scent, is available on request.
Business class customers on Air France now receive an amenity kit filled with Clarins cosmetics as well as mouthwash, slipper socks, toothbrush and eye shade. Passengers in the airline’s La Premiere cabins receive a leather cosmetics kit designed by Givenchy filled with skin care products by Biologique Recherche, including face cream, an anti-fatigue roll-on for the eyes, an eye mask, lip balm, hand cream and an oshibori hand towel.
Etihad, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, gives passengers in economy, business and first class cabins amenity kits that feature patterns of Sadou, a colorful, intricate and centuries-old Abu Dhabi weaving craft traditionally used on blankets, cushions and Bedouin tents. In addition to the nice array of products inside the bags, “I love the fact that Etihad has invested in an authentic design for their kits, embracing their cultural roots,” said Jonny Clark, a commercial pilot who evaluates airline products and design at TheDesignAir.
Free Ferris Wheel Spin, courtesy Finnair
Here’s a great perk of being a member of an airline’s mileage program.
A new 460-foot observation wheel – called the Finnair SkyWheel – began turning in Katajanokka harbour in central Helsinki on Tuesday and on Sunday, June 8th, all Finnair Plus members who show up between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. will get to take a spin on the wheel for free. All other times, Finnair Plus members get a discount.
The big wheel has 30 climate-controlled blue-and-white gondolas plus a special VIP cabin with a glass floor, leather seats and Veuve Clicquot champagne service.
One trip on the Finnair SkyWheel lasts 15 minutes and costs about $16. The ride in the VIP cabin lasts 25 minutes and costs about $265.
Happy Birthday, Finnair
Cover photo of the limited edition, Finnair-themed Donald Duck comic book distributed November 1, 2013 Finnair long-haul flights.
Finnair turned 90 on November 1 and kicked off a year of celebrations by handing out copies of this Finnair-themed Donald Duck comic book to passengers. The airline also had Finnish graphic designer Erik Bruun design a special anniversary poster.
Looking forward to more stylish and fun anniversary items from Finnair.