BRU-HEL-NRT AY71
NRT-HEL-BRU AY72/AY183

June 2017

JL JGC member / OW Sapphire

I'll add bits and pieces as I go along and find time.

Booking and seat selection
I booked this discounted fare through a travel agency with a BA code on it, which was cheaper than booking Finnair flights.
As a seasoned JL traveller, I had used the BRU-HEL sectors to connect to JL flights to NRT before, but never had a longhaul with AY.
The service on the BRU-HEL and in HEL being very basic, I didn't like the thought of flying AY long haul, but the great reviews about the A359 being quiet, pushed me over the edge.

Seat selections for the E190 feeders to/from HEL were open a few days after booking, the seat selection for the A359 flights were not until 24 hours before departure, when online check-in opened. The reason for this is apparent when you do the online check-in as a part of the Y cabin is sold at a premium as it offers additional legroom.
This is not ideal as JL offers seat selection at booking and as JGC member, I have the option to choose the better emergency exit row seats.




The connecting flights on E190 BRU-HEL/HEL-BRU

These long flights on the E190 are awful. I booked myself into the emergeny exit row 11, yet couldn't find a comfortable position to sit. I love the roomy feeling of the E190 but the seats have no ergonomy.
The service is mediocre for flights pushing 3 hours, just a glass of water or blueberry juice and the rest is for sale. LCC service for flights connecting to long haul? No thank you. 2/10




The lounge in BRU
Finnair uses the SN lounge in BRU, which I rate 8/10. Good food selections, enough space, but lack of privacy.



Transitting in HEL
Everything works in a single afternoon wave in HEL, and the corridors are narrow. We got bussed from a stand located by the high numbered gates all the way to the other side and had to walk the full length of the airport to reach the long haul lounge. HEL forces you through this corridor to lure you into their many duty free shops. Very cheap and not classy at all.
I lost 40 minutes that I could have spent in the lounge.
Definitely the worst airport in the world, worse even than many LCC airports. 1/10



The lounge in HEL (outbound)
Finnair's long haul lounge by gates 36 is worse than SN's Shenghen lounge in BRU. Food selection was limited to basic salads, dry breads, some beef stew, ill-cooked rice and tasteless potato chips. Drinks were available from a dispenser and the choice was between apple or orange juice or filtered water. Some wines were available but I don't drink alcohol so. Anyway Bleah.
There was barely any room to sit and most seats didn't offer the option to charge your PC during the lay-over.
The wifi was overloaded and hence sloooooooow.
AY's fares aren't particularily cheap, so this lounge deserves a 3/10.



The unimpressive A359 flight (outbound)
As I landed into HEL aboard the E190, it was apparent that AY have already received several A359's. They were to be found in every corner of the airport.
As I boarded my A359 flight, I noticed the very B787-like interior. A pillow, a blanket, ear pieces and a bottle of Evian were waiting for me on seat 41C, an aisle emergency exit seat.
I sat at my seat and immediately noticed that the seatback was unacceptably hard, there is no padding at all. It was just like sitting on a plank. I checked other seats and all seats were equally hard. As there was no way this was acceptable for 9 hours, I asked a F/A to find a solution, and he brought an additional pillow.
For this, Airbus and AY get a 0/10 on the seat product.

I also quickly noticed the lack of power supply to charge my laptop, which already whiped out the 3 hours I intended to spend working on it during the flight. There was no remote to control the IFE. The cabin fittings were very squeeky during taxiing, take-off and approach, which reminded me of the old B747's with their squeeky cabins. Airbus dropped the ball on these cheap finishings.
The toilet facilities were nothing special, the sink doesn't allow to accumulate water. Being a new aircraft, this is outrageous. 2/10.

The entertainment system is very basic with a selection of movies, series episodes. No live and no news programs, and the selection of recent movies is ridiculously limited.
The tail camera and the cockpit view of the flight data is great, so these give the IFE a 4/10. Without these features, 3/10 would be the best I could give the IFE.

A dinner meal was served after departure, and a breakfast before arrival. Both meal services were mediocre and insufficient in quantity.
No bread was served for breakfast, even though it was scrambled eggs and butter was provided. That is wI rate the catering as poor eird.
During the flight, drinks are available by the back galley. The drink selection is great although most are from concentrates. The blueberry juices only contain 15% of juice. The snacks were limited to Prezzels and cookies.
The overall catering gets a 4/10 because of the mediocre quality and quantity of the meals.

The onboard service was rather mediocre. They hold repetitive PA's for their onboard duty-free which is really annoying as the IFE stops each time. It was nothing short of Ryanair. I timed the IFE ads to add up to about 15 minutes of continuous campaigning, which is a lot considering there are also other PA's. Your IFE will also display duty-free messages that require you clicking the close button to continue airing whatever movie you were watching.
This is cheap and very poor on the part of AY. It deserves a 0/10 out of protest.

The A359 itself was not that quiet, and where I sat, it definitely sounded noisier than a B787. It was comparable to an Ejet or A320, but quieter than a B77W.
You can easily hold close-range conversations, but the noise is loud enough to cause jet lag for sure.
The hydraulics were very noticeable, probably the loudest of any aircraft in operation today.
The movements of the aircraft while stering and maneuvring, ie seat of the pants, were very noticeable where I sat, it felt like being on a single engine piston aircraft.
The cabin air quality and moisture level was quite good, though the lack of personal air vents is in my views not acceptable. The cabin temperature was very low, let's say even cold. This is a failure on the part of AY, not Airbus.
Airbus failed the passegers on the cabin fittings and the seats selection.
Overall, a disappointing 4/10. I will put this aircraft on the "avoid" list rather than the "get out of my way to fly it" list.

Nice report.
Airbus is not to blame about fittings and seats, airlines usually chooses a different sub contractor for those items.

Good report however sorry you did not have a good time on the A359. As for the noise as the engines got quieter the noise of the wind has increased. Reminds me of back in the days of the MD80 during the takeoff and climb the cabin was relativly quiet but once at cruise the wind noise especially in the front was so loud you could not even barely hear the engines in the back.

As I will be taking Finnair's A350 later this summer some of your comments are concerning. You are not the first to comment that Finnair has seemed to take the cheap route and go for cheaper fittings in the cabin. Have any others found the seat padding on this aircraft to be seriously wanting? From what I can find, reports on seat comfort on Finnair's A350 vary, some seem to find the seats too hard with little padding (as per your comments) while others find them acceptable. Having tried CX's slimline seats on their A350 you can definitely feel the difference when coming from CX's 777 seats. However I wouldn't classify them as uncomfortable per se. The A350's improved IFE, higher humidity, lower noise level and altitude pressure all go someway to offsetting the slightly less comfortable seating.

Also, to be fair I found some of your comments overly harsh. Who needs a remote for the IFE nowadays with touchscreen monitors within easy reach? IFE Remotes still make sense in premium cabins where the IFE might be outside easy reaching distance, but surely this is not a problem in economy? As for your other comments re service, well, it is economy class after all. Perhaps it is better to go in with lower expectations. If I remember, I will report back after my trip with my own comments and impressions.

JL maintenance tour

During my stay in Japan, I was able to enjoy a tour of JL's maintenance facilities, clled the JAL factory tour.
It's all in Japanee but it's also intended for a Japanese audience.
A B77W was undergoing a C-check and we could enjoy seeing a B767 being pulled into the hangar.
I come from aircraft maintenance and I have worked on C-checks myself, but I was impressed by the facilities that JL has in their heavy maintenance hangar. They even have the paint curtains, which is rare to see. Bravo to JAL though for keeping their heavy maintenance in Japan, as opposed to going for the cheapest option.
10/10 for JAL.

Pics omitted as JAL approval is required.



The return trip

Time for the return legs. NRT-HEL on A359 and HEL-BRU on E190 again.
My luggage allowance as OW sapphire is 3 pieces of 23kg. On JL, this would have been 3 x 32kg, but it doesn't really matter for this trip.



Online check-in and at the airport
Having arrived at the airport 2 hours prior to departure time, I couldn't see any business class counters, which was odd.
I could see several people standing at the opposite side of our row of counters, waiting for the counters to open, which they were while I was standing in queue, but I wasn't curious enough to bother to check.
There were priority counters available, as well as bagage drop-off and just regular economy counters.
The priority line had about 6 people in it, the bagage drop-off about 10 and the economy line, about 120. Having status or doing the online check-in pays off.
Security also had huge lines, but fortunately I could slide into the priority line thanks to my status.



The JAL lounge in terminal 2 NRT

As I usually fly through HND with JL, I had never used this lounge located by the 92 gates.
I remember using another JL lounge somewhere else in NRT, I will leave those interested to check out the different lounges available.
The lounge has a great view over the tarmac and I could actually follow the whole turn-around sequence of AY's A359 which had just arrived.
The food selection was great: the famous JAL curry with huge bits of beef meat (yes it was available for breakfast), a warm breakfast with scrambled eggs and sausages, the miso soup, breads, salads, sandwiches, drinks,...
The Wifi was great, privacy was available for those who wanted it, sockets all over the place,
In one word, JAL thought about everything and they deserve a 10/10.
AY needs to send some managers to Japan to figure out what they're doing wrong. Also, JL sells a lot of seats on AY, so AY should IMO bring their service up to JL standards.









The even more unimpressive A359 flight (inbound)

Well, I wasn't looking forward to it, but this time I booked myself into the 42A seat, which is an emergency exit seat with a window.
Due to the way the fuselage restricts the space by the fuselage/window, row 41 is in a 2-3-2 cofiguration instead of 3-3-3, thereby giving the window seats in row 42 endless legroom. Thank you Seatguru.
The same Evian-earplugs-pillow-blanket set awaited me at the seat and at completion of boarding, the seat next to me was open as were the two seats 41B and 41C. The rest of the Y section was packed. The two emergency exit seats on the other side remained empty too.
This begs the question: why didn't the FA's offer some of the taller or status pax to sit in those seats? This is standard procedure at JAL.
Why waste the best seats in the house?
Also, no emergency exit row briefing (not even a language check) was given to me on either legs and I wonder if from a safety perspective, it's good practice to leave those seats empty in a packed Y section. In the event of a crash, if the F/A is injured, valuable seconds could be lost getting to open the doors.
I took advantage of the situation to snag the Evians from row 41 B and C. Is it stealing? Not really, it's just poorly thought through of AY. JL serves the bottle of water on the meal trays, which is equally convenient and results in less waste. I wonder how AY does it when the load factors are low. Do they put a bottle in each seat and have the FA's pick them up or leave them in those seats for other pax to snag them.

Ow and the seats. The seatback was the exact same hard plank, so I snagged the pillows from 41B and 41C too.
Most pax who fly long haul once a year would probably not notice it until they get home and get a painful back, but unfortunately, when you are on a JAL Sky Wider seat every so often, you notice it straight away. Comee to think of it, on both legs I saw pax coming to the emergency exit area do stretching exercises while waiting for the lavatories. I almost never see this on JL flights where I also abuse the emergency exit seats. It could be owed to the hard seatback or whatever other inconvenience in the regular Y seats.
2/10 for the seats and I'm not even judging the pitch.

The below picture shows how much padding you've got. This is as far as you can get your thumb in, no matter how hard you push.




As I hadn't slept on the outbound leg and had had little sleep the last days, I tried to get some sleep. Unfortunately it didn't work out.
The noise of the aircraft could be heard over my earphones and it was a 50/40/10 mix of ram air (air rushing by) / engine exhaust air/air conditioning noise.. I feel that Airbus could have used better noise insulation in the sidepanels. You can't mask the vibrating noise of the huge GE90's on the B77W, but engine exhaust and ram air could be dealt with. I hope that JL takes this into consideration when choosing the fittings for their A350's. The noise was even worse in the window seat compard to my previous flight's aisle seat. 4/10 for the A359 on noise.


I tried to indulge into the IFE, but had already watched the handful of new releases and ended up enjoying Mr. Popper's penguins.
Here I get to discuss the discomfort of not having a remote. As I tried to get some sleep, I could feel the pax behind me tap on the screen behind me and remove the inflight magazine from the seatback pocket. Remember, you are sitting on the plank to which the screen of the pax behind you is attached, so you feel everything that is going on back there.
While a remote would not eliminate this problem, it could decrease the frequency with which this happens.
Also, as a seasoned traveller I know one thing when it comes to touchscreens on aircraft: they are great when the aircraft are brand new, but somewhere along the way they start losing their touch. That's when you pull out that remote and carry on with business as usual, instead of staring annoyed at the screen that doesn't do what you ask it to.
I rate this a 3/10.

The meals were again nothing special, except they were tasty this time. I don't know who does the catering for AY in NRT, but the meal was tasty. The quantity was disappointing again and no onigiri (rice balls) or sandwiches were available as with QR or TK. I had anticipated this by eating in the JL Sakura lounge but still not impressed with AY for being so cheap. 5/10 for quality but lack of quantity.





The never ending shopping ads to lure in Japanese customers, both on the PA and the IFE screens.
"If you order today, your order will be ready for you on your return flight"
"Our shoping cart may look small, but it's full of surprises".
Welcome aboard this Ryana...eurrrr ...Finnair flight to Hell.
Cheapness earns 0/10 on overall passenger service.





To be continued...

horizon360 wrote:

As I will be taking Finnair's A350 later this summer some of your comments are concerning. You are not the first to comment that Finnair has seemed to take the cheap route and go for cheaper fittings in the cabin. ...
Also, to be fair I found some of your comments overly harsh. Who needs a remote for the IFE nowadays with touchscreen monitors within easy reach?

AY's A350's are a nightmare in Economy, as I said in the past and I will say it again:
1. For me the padding is not the problem, but the size of the seat - the headrest is on the same level as my shoulders and unfortunately not very adjustable (like on the AIRBUS A330 fleet)
2. The PTV is not adjustable - so, if the front seat is reclined, the monitor will as well. So, impossible to watch movies...

Nice read and pictures, seems lower your expectations when flying AY in Y - note, internal fixtures and fittings are the choice of the airline, not Airbus directly.

I've flown AY's A350's 5 times in J and found the service and catering to be absolutely fine, though I do think some of the internal fittings are a bit on the cheap side and will wear quickly.

Cheers

BA319-132

ba319-131 wrote:

Nice read and pictures, seems lower your expectations when flying AY in Y - note, internal fixtures and fittings are the choice of the airline, not Airbus directly.

I've flown AY's A350's 5 times in J and found the service and catering to be absolutely fine, though I do think some of the internal fittings are a bit on the cheap side and will wear quickly.

Cheers

BA319-132

The airline does have a choice of suppliers for the fittings, seats and fixtures to a certain degree, but they have to choose from options provided by the manufacturer unless the airline is big enough and works closely together with a fittings OEM or aftermarket specialists. I doubt that a small airline like AY would have the luxury of choosing a supplier that isn't an Airbus high-tier supplier for their small order.



http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WsCAu3hzRIU/U ... pliers.jpg

Interesting report, thanks.

I personally found SIA's Y seats in the A350 to be shocking as well. 13.5hrs MAN-SIN was painful. By contrast, QR's 787 6 weeks prior was leagues ahead in terms of space, comfort and seat padding.

Yes Waterbomber, obviously, still, it is down to the airline to choose the supplier, I suspect AY went for the cheapest, you get what you pay for.

MANMatthew wrote:

I personally found SIA's Y seats in the A350 to be shocking as well. 13.5hrs MAN-SIN was painful.

That does make sense as I believe both Finnair and Singapore Airlines use the same Zodiac Z300 slimline seats in economy.