Sometimes when I'm traveling through or reading about Western Europe, I start to think about how nice it would be to live there for a while, or at the very least to explore it more. Today began as one of those days: I got in to Helsinki this morning, and though I was too exhausted to head to the city just to head back 4-6 hours later and figure out customs and security again, the airport itself seemed nice and the people in general seemed ridiculously attractive and pretty darn nice to boot. Then my battery ran low and my metaphorical battery started flagging -- there's like 1 outlet in the international terminal, and one cafe, where a small cup of black coffee and a muffin with hot-pink icing dribbled haphazardly across the top set me back $8. Eight dollars is like 12 lira, and I don't think I'd ever pay that much even for a medium latte and absurdly large-topped muffin at Starbucks. I figured that maybe I'd splurge and buy a day pass to the FinnAir lounge, and enjoy light refreshments in between naps in their sleeping pods, but unlike perhaps every American airline with a lounge, FinnAir doesn't offer day passes. Maybe it's a European thing.
In actual plane experience, though, FinnAir has been pretty darn awesome, especially when compared with my Delta flight over the same ocean last week. Between the actually nice blanket, the gigantic selection of newspapers when boarding, the better wine with dinner (and the quite good dinner, although Turkish Airways does better) and the comfier chairs, I was a pretty happy camper before the lights were even dimmed.
Also a huge plus, and one that I've not failed to complain about on every US-carrier transAtlantic flight I've taken (I suppose I'm a little spoiled), was the in-seat entertainment system. Lufthansa and Air France had more than decent seatback entertainment options in my experience, but FinnAir took it to the next level -- they had over 50 movies, at least 15 television shows and games and other media options galore, and all of them were set up to start whenever you wanted. My other European carriers have had a selection of movies, but the played on a loop, so once you finished the first, you'd switch over to the second movie of your choice and it'd be like a third of the way through, with no way to back it up.
Sealing my support of FinnAir (note to FinnAir: get a domestic partner to the Midwest and I will fly you all the time. Probably. Four legs is just a tad long, you know) was the fact that they had electrical outlets in every seat leg so you could charge your laptop in-flight. Delta's in flight magazine had promised such a thing, but closer inspection revealed no outlets, and the flight attendant said either they were just in one row in Economy or only in their planes to like Singapore. All very well if you're flying to Singapore, but I am not.
Unfortunately my seat was in the very last row of the plane, by the engines, so I hardly slept but aside from that everything was just brilliant. Kudos to FinnAir, even if their home airport could use a little razzledazzle. Get a decent homemade sandwich shop and some of those nice leather armchairs with outlets in the armrests in here and Helsinki'd be my layover of choice, rather than Midway.
Perhaps an airline comparison guide is in my future; I was totalling up the airlines I've travelled with in the last year and change, and it's a formidable number, from tiny little subsidiaries-of-budget-carriers in Turkey to a scattered handful of European national airlines to a grab bag of American outfits. So far Turkish Airlines is my favorite, not out of any nationalist pride but because they manage to serve a full hot lunch and beverage service on the 45-minute flight from Ankara to Istanbul. They should market that hop as a flying restaurant, really. In comparison, on my two flights between Chicago and Minneapolis last week, also about 45 minutes or so, we got a begrudging beverage service and had the opportunity to buy some peanuts if we wanted. The Chicago-Minneapolis pilot told better jokes, though. I'm not sure how that scoring rubric should look.

On that note, I'm off to wander the halls of the international terminal once more,
kib,
-R