Review: Finnair’s new Air Lounge Business Class from Helsinki to London
To much scepticism and debate, Finnair launched their new Business Class seat dubbed Air Lounge in February 2022. I had originally planned to have a weekend away in Oslo during February but, due to Covid and other reasons, we had to postpone but this gave us a unique opportunity to fly back from Oslo to London via Helsinki. Our trip included a flight from Oslo Gardermoen to Helsinki Vantaa on an ATR propeller plane followed by a 20 hour layover, with time to explore the city, before a quick stop in the Finnair Lounge and then our Air Lounge flight on the Airbus A330. Let’s take a look at how this seat performed on the three hour flight to London.
Initial impressions
We entered the Airbus A330 through the second set of doors on the aircraft. Finnair has made some effort to improve the boarding experience. Rather than a sterile looking metal doors covering the trolley carts used, the airline have covered it in their signature blue and light wood finishings - a continuation of the lounge design. Supposedly, and from the promotional videos, the Airbus A350 looks a bit more impressive in this space when entering the aircraft.
The Business Class cabin itself consists of seven rows of seats in a 1-2-1 configuration which means that you do not need to climb over any other passengers to get a comfort break. Unfortunately, there’s none of the wonderful multi-coloured cabin lighting that Finnair uses on the A350 to emulate the Northern Lights. Design-wise, the cabin has changed a lot from the previous design, swapping the very clean, almost dull and clinical design, across the cabin for extensive use of light greys but with splashes of the rich Finnair blue with accents of gold and silver on elements.
In a post-covid first, for me at least, the cabin crew provided refreshing hot towels after boarding the aircraft.
The seat
The design of the Air Lounge seat is extremely innovative and, as with anything innovative, has caused a stir within the frequent flyer community. The primary change is that the seat is a fixed shell, akin to a sofa, that does not recline which results in no ability to alter the angle at which you can position yourself. For Finnair, the benefit is that this reduces the weight of the seat as there is less moving parts as well as less chance of mechanical failure. For passengers this could be a catch 22 as the default seating position may not be comfortable for eating or watching the in-flight entertainment. You’re here to read my opinion, though, and I found the seat excellent.
I am one of those strange people who likes crossing their legs to get comfortable and here, even at 6ft2/188cm, I can do so with ease thanks to the amount of space that has been achieved with the new seat. The seat is a lot wider than the existing Business Class on the Airbus A350 while it still maintains a level of comfort and padding that is akin to before.
On this flight, two pillows were provided - one which was filled with a regular pillow and the other with a gel pillow for extra support. The idea is that when the cabin is launched properly on their long haul routes in May, more extensive pillows will be deployed to make up for the lack of recline.
When in seated position to the window side there is:
A light-coloured wood console that is probably big enough to hold a few drinks on
In-built Qi wireless charger
Seat control buttons, a cubby hole that on long flight
Cubby hole for storage where the headphones are stored on long-haul flights as well as a remote, headphone jack and USB/USB-C ports
Below the fixed console is a stowed table that after you have pressed the release button can be pulled out for use - either for a meal or using a laptop on. Underneath this is a dark blue faux-leather area underneath which is the feet of the passenger behind you.
Above your shoulder, a more focused light can be deployed for reading and angled quite liberally. It’s well designed and the gold accent provides a more premium feeling to the item on the seat - even if I couldn’t use it on this exceptionally bright and sunny day outside.
I actually spent an extended amount of time working on my laptop while on this flight and have some thoughts on the table itself. The table is pretty large and could easily hold my MacBook Pro 13 inch laptop and it is designed in a way that one can easily move the table back and forth with one hand if you need to leave your seat for the toilet. My only gripe about the table is that if you have a tendency to type heavily the table can wobble a bit because there is only support on one side of the table - although this can be a common issue on a number of Business Class seats globally.
Although the flight is pretty short, I did get a chance to get into sleeping mode on the seat. The easiest way to get the seat set up is to stand up first then pull the lever on the furthest leg rest in the downward position.
Next you can press the upward button on the console which lifts up the closest leg rest to fill the gap. To go back to sitting position you just repeat this process in reverse.
Together this creates a lengthy space to stretch out in and get some rest. Some observations from the couple of minutes I spent laying down is that the footwell is no less constrained than that of other reverse herringbone seats such as the new-ish British Airways Club Suite. I could lift my feet from side to side or up and down with ease but I could see how some people could find it a little constrained - particularly if you have large feet.
Comfort wise, laying down the seat is quite firm and I found it comfortable - but this is likely to come down to personal preference. In addition to the three point seat belt for the seated position, another seat belt is added for the laying position to comfortably be restrained while sleeping.
If you are sleeping and do not want to be disturbed, you can press the DND button on the side console which turns the external wall seat number to a glowing red.
Down towards the footwell you will notice another storage space which is neatly designed with a large enough space to store my laptop - and possibly extra to fit an iPad too - as well as small items like a wallet and a bottle of water. This is a practical, valuable addition that puts function over form for the benefit of the passenger.
In-flight entertainment & WiFi
Along with the rest of the cabin refit, the in-flight entertainment has also been upgraded which can be operated either via the remote or the touch screen. I was happy to see some of the excellent design of the previous A350 in-flight entertainment, such as the ‘journey at a glance’ home screen that is particularly good on a long-haul flight to identify what time your meal and rest will be.
Before getting started, the screen has a button where you can tap to watch a video on how to operate the Air Lounge seat - which is pretty useful if passengers are used to more traditional Business Class seat designs. It’s extremely self-explanatory making it simple for anybody to work out how to utilise the most out of the seat functions. Surprisingly, I noticed a number of passengers watching it.
For a short flight, Finnair had loaded an extensive range of films which could easily number in the hundreds - yet I still couldn’t decide what to watch! TV Shows were a little more limited with only four or five episodes per show.
An upgraded interactive in-flight map also features on the new system which will please all avgeeks. This is one of the most advanced in-flight maps in the industry which has high quality terrain and satellite imagery as well as the ability to interact with it extensively - including the ability to find out information and the populations of random cities globally. In-flight cameras finish off the system but they are the original cameras installed when the aircraft was built, which is to say they are pretty grainy and poor to look at.
Finally, the Wi-Fi on-board was perfectly serviceable. Business Class passengers receive around 1 hour free Wi-Fi connectivity while Finnair Platinum and above received unlimited in-flight Wi-Fi. I managed to get a respectable 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps upload speeds on this flight which was decent enough to do a few emails and stay connected on Slack - although I couldn’t connect to YouTube or Netflix on this journey. One annoyance with the Wi-Fi was that I could not end a Wi-Fi session on my laptop onto my mobile phone - so be wise before picking the device you connect.
Toilets and amenities
There were three dedicated Business Class cabin toilets on this flight and they appear to have received a minor uplift too. The toilets have been clad in a cool wood effect floor and surroundings alongside excellent lighting integrated into the mirror. Upon visiting two of the bathrooms, the cabin crew managed to keep them extensively clean and tidy which isn’t always a given on European airlines.
Like the lounge, the soap and moisturiser amenities in the toilets are provided by Swedish company La Bruket. Again, these are of excellent quality and smell gorgeous.
Food and drinks
Food constituted the worst part of this flight. While edible, the breakfast offered by Finnair was quite average constituting:
an egg omelette covered with a creamy sauce
Pureed tomato
A randomly placed piece of broccoli
Potato rosti
A bread roll and croissant - neither warm
Pre-packaged mixed fruit platter
Certainly not exciting and not particularly large either. When you combine with the far from perfect breakfast offering in the lounge, Finnair could do with upgrading their food offering in the breakfast hours.
Drinks were available including Champagne and the signature Blueberry Juice - which I had around 4 glasses of. For now, the signature Ultima Thule glasses can still be found on board for all drinks - but these will only be used for Champagne in future when the new cabin design is fully launched supposedly to save weight and fuel. Coffee was available but was just the standard filter coffee affair that was pretty weak - tea was also available.
Conclusion
Outside of the food, this was easily one of my favourite widebody, short haul flights I’ve experienced. I was sceptical that I would like the new Air Lounge seat but I will be happy to fly it again and also to see how well it performs on a longer flight - such as my journey on Finnair to Singapore next year. It will be interesting to see how comfortable the seat remains as well as how the additional amenities, e.g. bedding and pillows, perform in future. The airline should be congratulated on introducing a radically different design for their new seat rather than doing the same as everybody else. Some have raised concerns about seat cleanliness with the fixed seat design - however I do not see this as being much more of an issue over existing seat designs.
Most of the improvements I see Finnair making are primarily relating to the soft product, mostly food and drinks. It just needs to be better than it is right now while the coffee really needs to be improved. If Singapore Airlines or Qatar Airways, who will compete on many of the same connecting routes, can offer espresso machines on-board then Finnair should look to as well. In spite of this, I would not hesitate to recommend this flight if you are flying to and from Helsinki on their short haul routes. I expect that I will have the same thoughts and recommendation after my first long haul Air Lounge flight.
I should soon be publishing a video review of this flight on YouTube which I can’t wait to share - but I want to get it just right, so there will be a delay in publishing.
