Finnair A330 business class

LONDON-HELSINKI

BACKGROUND Finnair launched this new long-haul business class seat in February with the Helsinki-Singapore route beginning in May. Flights on short-haul routes began in March. The new seats will be retrofitted on existing A330 and A350 aircraft, and come 'line-fit' on the few remaining orders of A350s from Airbus. Note that the photos here are from the A350 (Finnair does not have photos of the A330 fitted). To see the A330 seat go to Business Traveller's You Tube channel.

CHECK-IN Finnair check-in is located in Zone B at Terminal 3 London Heathrow. I arrived at 0815 for my 1020 departure on AY1332. There was no queue at the priority check-in and, having collected my boarding card, I made my way up to Fast Track Security. There was a queue so we were advised to use the normal security, which took around ten minutes.

THE LOUNGE Finnair does not have its own lounge at London Heathrow so business class flyers have the choice of the Oneworld lounges. I chose the Cathay Pacific Lounge, which was, as always, excellent, though very busy, mainly with passengers waiting for their American Airlines flights.

BOARDING The flight boarded from Gate 26. Priority boarding was seamless and we were onboard by 0940.

THE SEAT The new seat is a completely different concept from Finnair's previous two business class seats, which were adapted 'off the shelf' seats, firstly from Thompson Aero (the Contour Vantage seat) and then the current Zodiac Cirrus III (Aries) seat - first introduced in 2015 (you can read a review of it on businesstraveller.com).