Blue1 flight KF 428 ARN-HEL

Departure: 18.05 (18.05)
Arrival: 20.05 (20.05)
Inflight service: Coffee on the house
Landing: Kinda Blueish

Blue1 should definitely change the marketing agency / copy writer! First they came up with the name Blue1 and now this found on Blue1's B.O.B* menu:

"Hunger is the BEST sauce in the world."! What the heck are they trying to say? Are the products really so bad that you have to be hungry to enjoy them...?

Blue1 flight KF 425 HEL-ARN

Departure: 7.52 (8.00)
Arrival: 7.58 (8.00)
Inflight service: Coffee
Landing: A little bit shaky

Calm and quiet when getting to the airport at 7.00. I guess there must have been some Christmas hangover in the air? At least I found this at Gate 14...

For a change I flew Blue1 today. The after math of yesterday's storm was still noticeable, which meant a lot of bumps in the road but the flight was on time, and that's what matters the most.

I wonder what on earth the branding agency was thinking of when they came up with the name Blue1? 

Is it Blue as in depressing??? Adding number 1 doesn't help a bit, that just makes it the most depressing!

According to me Blue1 must be one of the worst airline names around. What about you, do you have similar examples or can we unanimously vote Blue1 as the most depressing airline name ever?

Finnair flight AY 650 ARN-HEL

Departure: 20.40 (20.37)
Arrival: 22.45 (22.25)
Inflight service: Coffee
Landing: Kangarooish

The lack of Christmas spirit onboard Santa's official airline is striking! It's really strange that Finnair doesn't take more advantage of a superbrand like Santa???

Enough of grumpy comments. Xmas is anyways over in a few days and you can find my earlier comments on the topic here and here.

Finnair - What do you say about spicing up next Christmas with a little bit more of this?

Picture: http://blogs.finnair.com

F as in Fashionable

Finally I know what F I N N A I R stands for!

F = Fashionable   I = Ingenious   N = New Thinking   N = Nordic   A = Appealing
I = Inspiring   R = Retro

Picture: https://gallery.finnair.com

Finnair's new cabin crew uniforms were launched last week, and the buzz surrounding the launch indicated that something big was going on. Seeing them live for the first time, made me understand what the buzz was all about. The new uniforms simply looks amazing. To be honest - they do look much better live than in pictures.

A big ovation for Finnair and Ritva-Liisa Pohjalainen, being bold enough to create something that sticks out in a fashionable, ingenious, new thinking, nordic, appealing, inspiring and "retroish" way!

Finnair flight AY 643 HEL-ARN

Departure: 8.30 (8.00)
Arrival: 8.20 (8.00)
Inflight service: Coffee...where's the Glögi, it's Christmas and everything?
Landing: Did we land already?

Really crowded in the departure hall but the Fast Track did its magic, due to 2 screening devices in use (earlier comments regarding the Oneworld fast track can be found here).

Pre-flight visit to the Schengen lounge. Hardly noticeable that Christmas is a few days away???? Finnair's official Santa airline profile is taking a hit here. On top of that, no Cristmas music and greetings like on the Norwegian flights last week.

Note to Finnair: With being the "Official Santa Airline", comes great responsibilities, e.g. spreading the Xmas spirit! Santa is not happy with you right now ;-)

Picture: http://terrygrayshon.blogspot.com/

When in London...

... use the underground - the fastest and most environmentally friendly way to take you around London!

If you're not a frequent user of the tube, finding your way around can be tricky. But don' t worry, there's is an app that will make your next trip on the tube hassle free, in terms of navigation.

This little app is plain and simply called London Underground. What this app gives you is a complete map of London's underground where you can choose your start station and end station - the app will then tell you the smartest way to get from point A to point B. With smartest I mean either the quickest route or the one with fewest changes. After you've done your selections your smartphone screen could look like this:

Here I've selected South Kensington as my starting point and Euston Square as my end station. The stations where one is supposed to do something (e.g change of line) are numbered. If the map view seems confusing then there's another feature in the app that shows you the proposed route as text:

In this overview you get to know the names of the lines you should take and the directions (eastbound, westbound etc.). When you have this information all you have to do is to follow the signs on the train and stations  - easy as pie!

I give this app the highest of recommendations. It's user friendly and saves a lot of time when finding one's way around the London underground.

Norwegian flight DY 5819 LGW-HEL

Depature: 20.18 (18 .45)
Arrival: 00.41 (23.45)
Inflight service: B.O.B* Red wine
Landing: No comments, you can see my last comment here.

On top of being delayed with 1 hour, we got a bonus spelled STAND ARRIVAL. That's it folks, sorry for being grumpy!

High punctuality...

First this:

And then this:

After an autumn with only one delay of 15 minutes, the above situation tend to be quite humorous. It must be Mr. Murphy again...

Key-learning of the day: "Don't count your chickens until they're hatched"

Norwegian flight DY 4459 ARN-LGW

Departure: 18.18 (18.20)
Arrival: 19.47 (19.55)
Inflight service: B.O.B* Red wine
Landing: Come on guys, you have to treat the bird gently. Maybe some "crash courses" at Finnair could make your landings smoother???

Jihaaa - SKY interior, exit row and free WiFi. Doesn't get much better on a budget airline, does it?

Thanks Norwegian for boosting my Christmas spirit! The Christmas music played when boarding and the little Christmas greeting on the screens made me realize that Christmas is just a few days away. This makes me wonder whether Norwegian should be the official Santa airline instead of Finnair?

Burn the itineraries!

I guess we all have experienced the hassle of having all too many itineraries when travelling. Papers all over the place and never the right one at the right time. Does it sound familiar? If it does, then I now the cure - it's called Tripit.

Personally i hate the fuss with sorting out the right itineraries, when for example checking in. OK I have to admit it, I'm not the most well organized traveller around. However, a couple of months back I found an app that has made the old travel documents unnecessary, and me better prepared when travelling. Imagine no need of printing itineraries or booking confirmations before you head out on a trip. It sounds amazing, and so it is!

The use of Tripit is as simple as could be. All you have to do is to get an account on Tripit and download the app to your smartphone. When you've done that, your'e almost ready to rock. After this you can either allow Tripit to scan your mail for itineraries/bookings or mail them to plans@tripit.com. Either way you choose, you will have all your different bookings bundled together into one neat travel plan, like the one below.

   
All of sudden you have all the information regarding your trip on your smartphone's screen. Of course you can drill down for further details regarding for example confirmation numbers, terminals and so forth.

All in all, Tripit works like a dream either you choose the free version or Tripit Pro. Tripit Pro has one feature that I like in particular and that's the fact that it monitors flights on your behalf. E.g. it tells you when web check.in may be available or if there are any delays to expect.

This may sound like an advertisement for Tripit, but it's not. I'm just a very happy user, that can't imagine going back to the time when I had to print all my bookings.

Norwegian flight DY 4280 HEL-ARN

Departure: 6.50 (6.50)
Arrival: 6.50 (6.50)
Inflight service: B.O.B (buy onboard) Nescafé
Landing: Well, let's wait and see (posted up in the air)

Have to say that I really like the new SKY interior onboard Boeing 737-800. It really makes the cabin feel light and spacious.

Picture: www.nowegian.com

The draw back of no newspapers onboard is more than compensated with free inflight WIFI. Thumbs-up for Norwegian on this point, I like :-)))

A humble question to Norwegian: it seems you're into high-tech...but why no web check-in? It is year 2011, right???

Finnair flight AY 634 HEL-ARN

Departure: 13.00 (13.00)
Arrival: 14.55 (15.00)
Inflight service: What, no coffee???
Landing: Soft as cotton

Got a bit grumpy due to lack of coffee onboard. Only juice and water served...strange I must say.

Thumbs-up for the professional Miss Sunshine, greeting everybody traveling in coach. A smile and a friendly welcome onboard can really light up even the darkest of days. Thanks, you made my day!

Welcome Home

"I am the passenger, and I ride and I ride"

Life in the Fast Track

Fast track is indeed a great invention that saves much time when it works, but can also be a real time thief when it doesn't.

Since I’m using Finnair’s / Oneworld’s fast track at Helsinki Airport more or less every week, I thought I would share a tip on when it makes sense to use the fast track and when not. In fact the efficiency of the fast track has puzzled me a lot over the years, because sometimes it’s faster than the regular security screening and sometimes it’s much slower.

So now to the point! By observing and trying I’ve come to the following conclusion (my apologies for the bad illustration below, drawing is definitely not one of my core competences).

My intention was to illustrate the queues leading up to the security screening at Helsinki Airport T2, as they looked yesterday morning at 6.50 (no there were no happy gingerbreads standing in line but that was the best illustration I could find in Power Point).

Normally a passenger who’s entitled to use fast track would choose the fast track when evaluating the length of the queues. However, this is not what you should do at Helsinki Airport T2.

The key to success is to spot how many screening devices are in use on the fast track. If it’s only 1, proceed to the slow track, but if there are 2 screening devices in use - use the fast track!

To put it in a nutshell: if both lines start at the same point of the terminal (i.e. same distance to the security screening) and there is only 1 screening device in use on the fast track - choose the slow track!

This may sound strange, but I’ve tested this thesis on several occasions and so far it hasn’t failed.

Finnair flight AY 643 HEL-ARN

Departure: 8.14 (8.00)
Arrival: 8.06 (8.00)
Inflight service: Coffee
Landing: Smooth Finnair standard.
Boarded late so no newspapers available. I wish Post Man Pat would have paid a visit to my seat :-)

I stand corrected

Apparently the elf look is OK! Any thoughts on that, anybody...?

Picture: http://worldscrews.blogspot.com/

Oops they did it again...

Here we go again. Flight looked really full when I checked in yesterday, and as certain as Austrian's corporate colour is red, I received the regular SMS from Finnair Plus.

For my feelings on this topic click here:  "Finnair Plus proposes personal upgrade..."

Tickle all senses

As mentioned in my previous posting, colours plays an esential part in creating corporate identity - for good or bad. Most airlines are well aware of this and do their uttermost to create a visually appealing image onboard their planes.

But since traveling should be a holistic experience I think most airlines could improve alot on the audio side. Creating a corporate sound identity should be as important as creating a visual identity.

Finnair is almost done with their revamping of their visual identity except for the launch of the new crew uniforms that will take place on the 15th of this month. However, i still think Finnair lacks a sound identity.

From my childhood I remember when my family took the big white Silja Line ferries to Sweden. As soon as we entered the big ferry we were met by a really catchy theme song. Even today I connect this  song with happy memories connected to traveling. That is something you can call a good sound identity - if it even 30+ years later brings up good memories.



I'm not saying that Finnair should go in creating an annoying theme song like Turkish Airlines'.



However, I'm sure adding another sense into the travelling experience committs a passenger even more to the airline. What do you think?

Corporate colours shaping identity

As quality hunter Asami Nagai wrote in her posting on the QH webpage; corporate colours surely leaves an impression on its customers.

I remember my first flight with Austrian Airlines a couple of years back. The colours really left an everlasting  impression, an impression I'v been stuck with ever since. Unfortunately the impression wasn't a good one, quite the opposite.

Picture: Austrian Airlines

Either the designer of this interior must have been colour blind or disillusioned. How on earth can someone come up with a colour combination like this? Unfortunately this impression/identity - being shaped by colours - has made me avoid flying with Austrian if other possibilities have been available.


The other day, I was very pleased to find out that Austrian has launched a new cabin interior. I have to say, much more to my liking (maybe I'm being old fashioned here, so be it).

   Picture: Austrian Airlines

Now, I'm in fact looking forward to my next flight with Austrian. Still, I have one humble request for Austrian: Please skip the red pantyhose when you update the uniforms for the cabin crew next time. Red pantyhose may be OK for christmas, but running around looking like a small elf all year round is not OK. Not even if your corporate colour is red.

Picture: http://worldscrews.blogspot.com  

Finnair flight AY 648 ARN-HEL

Departure: 18.34 (18.40)
Arrival: 20.21 ( 20.35)
Inflight service: Coffee, what else???
Seating: Hey, someone nicked my exit seat?

Landing: Some bumps in the road down.

@Finnair, thank you for taking me home, well ahead of schedule. But hey, since you are the official Santa airline, why not serve some Glühwein onboard your shorter flights before christmas? Non-alcoholic of course ;-)

Samsonite losing the grip

I’ve been a fan of Samsonite products for quite some time now. Usually the price-quality ratio is really good and I must say I love Samsonite’s worldwide guarantee.

So the other day I started to look for a replacement for my old Samsonite cabin trolley. It has been a true retainer and I’ve been more than pleased with it. Since the old one was a softsided version, not protecting the luggage in the same sense as a hardsided, I decided to look for one with hard shells. Indeed I have to admit that I was partly influenced by the Samsonite Cosmolite clip I found on Youtube (not only rational reasoning as you can see J).

After seeing the clip I was sold (you have to admit that the durability is quite impressive). I just had to get me one of those. So off I went, whistling the Postman Pat theme, in for some serious shopping!

My expectations were skyrocketing when entering the store. At first glimpse the almighty Cosmolite looked astonishing but after a few seconds of scrutiny the hard reality hit me straight in the face. A perfect product, in all other ways, was being ruined by a design flaw. Why, oh, why, dear engineers at Samsonite, did you not add the top handle found on most cabin trolleys?

Without the top handle the trolley is not as easy to handle, standing in a crowded aisle, as one with a top handle. For me this is a deal-breaker on a cabin trolley. What do you think, with or without top handle?

Cosmolite picture from: www.samsonite.com

Finnair goes Postman Pat

What the heck could Postman Pat and Finnair have in common one could ask oneself? Well, except for Finnair Cargo I guess there are no connections. But with that being said, I don't say there couldn't be more connections. Because there could!

Imagine yourself arriving late to the gate for a morning flight. Usually it means that there are no newspapers left for you, so you are forced to read through "Bluewings" for the xx time (btw. "Bluewings" rocks, it's one of the better inflight magazines around). However, even the best of magazines gets dull when you've studied it more thoroughly than you ever did with a book for an exam.

Enter "Postman Pat"!!! It would be a fantastic acknowledgement of Finnair's frequent flyers if they were able to "subscribe" to one of the newspapers being offered at the gate. Instead of picking it up at the gate, the newspaper they've subscribed to would be waiting for them in their seat. This would really add a personal touch to the flight.

I know some airlines greet their frequent flyers by name, and that's of course nice. But "Postman Pat" would take greeting the frequent flyer to a whole new level. What do you think?

Finnair flight AY 643 HEL-ARN

Departure: 8.06 (8.00)
Arrival: 8.13 (8.00)
Inflight service: None, slept the whole flight
Landing: Kind of hardish, not regular Finnair style
Seating: Sniffing the divider

Cosy flight, read the news papers before take-off. Dosed off during ascent. Woke up for a brief moment when some water was spilled on me. But hey, it wasn't coffee :-)

Finnair Plus proposes personal upgrade...

This morning I received the following SMS from Finnair Plus:

Usually this is a sign of the upcoming flight's economy class being full and Finnair would like to move some people to business class.

One could think this is a nice gesture from Finnair, at least I did the first time I received the SMS. I thought it was flattering to receive a personal message from Finnair, proposing an upgrade, but somehow I could smell a rat here. Is this really a "Win-Win" situation for both carrier and the frequent flyer?

Let's examine the proposal a little closer. For a flight time of 50 minutes and 398 km I would be charged 7000 points. First of all 7000 points means a discount of 500 points as the normal upgrade charge is 7500 points. But is the offer still worth it? Let us put it into a bigger context and do some benchmarking.

As you can see, the upgrade charge per km is approx 3 times higher than an upgrade charge to New York. In comparison with Lisbon the upgrade charge per km is 6 times higher! Why would I accept a deal like this? It's definitely not a "win-win" proposal. The big winner in this case is Finnair, because if someone accepts this deal Finnair gets to deduct some points from a frequent flyer instead of upgrading someone for no charge at all.

Dear Finnair Plus, when proposing deals like this in the future, make them a win-win proposal. Now I just feel insulted!

Seating preferences

Check-in done for flight AY 643 on Monday. No exit row seats availabe this time either. Being taller than the average bloke, exit row seating really offers that extra comfort needed to make the flight a good one.

It was a huge step forward when Finnair started to offer the possibility to prebook exit-row seats on longhaul flights against a small fee. I think Finnair should extend this possibilty so that it also would cover shorter flights! At least I'm willing to pay something for extra comfort. What do you think?

If prebooking of exit-row seats on shorter fligths is not doable I think Finnair should offer a possibilty for their Platinum & Gold members to add exit-row as a seating preference in their traveler profile.

Thank you Quantas for the picture.

Finnair flight AY 648 ARN-HEL

Departure: 18.29 (18.40)
Arrival: 20.17 (20.35)
Inflight service: More coffee
Landing: Finnair standard, smooth.
Missing the good old days when you at least got a bread roll to chew on.

We remind you that this is a non-smoking flight…

For years and years most flights have been non-smoking flights. Haven’t we all heard the following inflight announcement, “We remind you that this is a non-smoking flight. Smoking is prohibited in the entire aircraft, including the lavatories"! To me this announcement is crystal clear, capeesh, I get it.

No smoking means no smoking. Since this is clear for most passengers I would assume it would be clear for Boeing and Airbus as well. But no! They do insist on adding ashtrays to the lavatory doors!?

Dear engineers at Airbus and Boeing, which part of non-smoking didn’t you understand? If a flight is meant to be non-smoking you don’t need to put in ash trays. For a smoker, going to the lavatory, could be equalized to sending someone to “Temptation Island”. Aren’t the poor bastards, that fancy a smoke during the flight, more likely to be tempted to smoke when they see an ashtray? To me, It’s like showing a shot to a junkie.

So please Mr Boeing, next time you redesign the lavatory doors, skip the ashtrays and add nicotine gum dispensers instead.

Aunt Orange

The children's book author Elsa Beskow's most famous tale is probably Aunt Green, Aunt Brown and Aunt Lavender. However, the one aunt she left out of her little fairytale is Aunt Orange. Why, one may ask oneself? The reason is quite obvious, Aunty Orange didn't live back in the year of 1918. How do I know that...well it's because she's taking the same flight as I every Monday morning.

As I've been commuting back and forth to Stockholm for the last 3 years there are some faces on the flights that have become more familiar than others. One of these faces belongs to Aunt Orange. Why do I call her Aunt Orange??? The reason is quite simple, mostly she wears orange clothes and her hair is dyed orange (secondly I haven't got the faintest idea of who she is?). Don't get me wrong now, she's not the spitting image of a carrot, she's orange in a classy way.

She is one of the persons that has become my nodding friend, i.e. we never speak, we just nod in silent and mutual understanding. It's good to have a nodding friend, all of a sudden flying ain't so unpersonal.

To kill some time when waiting for departure I've played this little mind game called "Judge the book by its cover". As the name suggests it's the opposite to the old saying "Never judge the book by its cover". The rules are quite simple; create the life story of an unknown person based upon his/her physical appearance. Of course I've played this game with Aunty O as objective...

So who is Aunty when judging her by the cover? She's a successfull researcer within medicine in her mid 50's. Never been married. Plays flute in a folkband. She got promoted to senior researcher approx one year ago (this conclusion is based upon the fact that she used to fly coach together with me, but all of a sudden she started to fly business)...I could go on and on with the story of her life if it wasn't for one thing.

One morning I happened to to get a glimpse of some papers she was reading, and my story was crushed. Instead of reading some ground breaking medical reviews she was going through a pile of papers with a big bank's logo on them. All of sudden she wasn't this researcher that was about to come up with a cure for HIV, instead she became a common mortal that doesn't play the flute. But still, a common mortal all dressed in orange.

Thank you Aunt Orange for flying with me and making commuting much more personal.

Finnair flight AY 643 HEL-ARN

Departure time: 8.09 (scheduled 8.00)
Arrival time: 8.16 (8.00)
Inflight service: Coffee
Landing: Smoothest ever

I guess winter is on its way, first de-icing for the season :(

Flight deck announcements

Last week on flight AY 1919 from Helsinki to Aqaba the first announcement from the flight deck was, how shall I say it, not up for a flying start. Shortly after take off the captain's confident voice was heard over the speaker system: " Good morning, this is Captain Jones (name tampered) and with me here in the cockpit I have co-pilot Smith.........(a few seconds of dead silence passed)....sorry, this is Captain Smith and with me here I have co-pilot Jones...".
Mixing up your name with your colleague could either be a sign of severe nervousness or fatigue, conditions not ranking high when your supposed to take a plane full of passengers from point A to B. Well, I guess mistakes happen and the ride to Aqaba ended up being a real charm.

The importance of flight deck announcements are on some airlines underrated. The other week on a China Eastern flight from Shanghai to Singapore the crew on flight deck must have been mute. Not one single announcement, not a single word was heard from cockpit during the entire flight. Not even when encountering severe turbulence. In my world that's strange. I find it encouraging when the captain or co-pilot bothers to say a few words if something out of the ordinary happens.

On the other hand we have the pilots suffering from oral diarrhoea. The first five announcements can be funny but when the pilot has decided to guide you through your whole flight of 4 hours, being constantly "on the air" I think he should have applied for a job on the local radio station instead of flying passenger planes.

Too much or too less is never good. But if had to choose between mute or diarrhoea I would go for the latter one.

As a courtesy to the next passenger...

When going for an errand to the lavatory in a plane you may encounter the following little sign saying "as a courtesy to the next passenger may we suggest that you use your towel to wipe off water basin". Indeed it is an admirable thought but somehow I think the sign is needed for other purposes.

So please Mr Boeing, next time you redesign the signage in the lavatories skip the sign above the basin. Instead add one next to the flush button saying "As a courtesy to the next passenger may we suggest that you flush the toilet". That would really make a difference for the next passenger.

Best regards

The next passenger

Illaksi kotiin (home by night)

Inspired by Finnairs commercial "Illaksi Kotiin" (finnish for "home by night") I decided to start this blog. For the last 3 years Finnair has been the main carrier taking me home to my loved ones. Especially flight AY648 has been my personal "Rudolph", not letting me or my family down that many times.

This blog is intended to be a place for reflection on the ups and downs of traveling in the line of business. Most likely some thoughts regarding commuting between two countries for work will slip in every now and then.

Fasten your seat belts for take off!