Finnair Will Fly To San Francisco In 2017

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In news that’s sure to be welcomed by oneworld flyers, Finnair has announced that it intends to operate a seasonal route between Helsinki and San Francisco from summer 2017. The Scandinavian airline plans to employ its Airbus A330-300 aircraft on the new route which will operate 3x/week.

Finnair’s Helsinki – San Francisco Service

Finnair’s new route will operate between 1 June and 28 September 2017 on the following schedule:

AY011 HEL 16:35 – 17:20 SFO (Tue, Thu, Sun)
AY012 SFO 19:10 – 15:30+1 day HEL (Tue, Thu, Sun)

This is what Finnair has to say about the new service:

Thanks to Helsinki’s geographical location, Finnair’s new northern route to San Francisco will offer competitive travel times for customers from Scandinavia, the Baltics, Russia as well as from many European cities. San Francisco will be Finnair’s fourth US destination, along with New York, Chicago and Miami.

This is EXCELLENT news for oneworld flyers as Finnair is well-known for offering great Business Class fares to most, if not all, of the destinations it serves so, hopefully, we can expect more of the same here.

Reservations for these flights are already open, but I wouldn’t rush to book seats just yet. As things stand it doesn’t look as if Finnair has released seats across all its fare classes so I would expect to see a fall in price sometime soon.

Finnair A330-300

When I first saw this news I really hoped that Finnair had scheduled its excellent A350 aircraft to fly the San Francisco route…but that was a little too much to hope for. Instead we have the A330-300….and that’s not too bad.

Based on the seat maps that have been loaded Finnair will be operating an A330-300 with 45 Business Class seats….

…..40 Economy Comfort seats and 178 regular Economy Class seats.

All of this is good news for Economy Class travelers because Finnair’s A330-300 is positively capacious compared to most aircraft that fly across the Atlantic.

• Economy Comfort offers seats that are 18″ wide and have 35″ of seat pitch
• Economy Class offers seats that are 18″ wide and have 32″ of seat pitch

Finnair Economy Class Cabin A330-300

Finnair Economy Class Cabin A330-300

Finnair Economy Comfort Seats A330-300

There’s also good news for Business Class flyers as well.

Although the Finnair A330-300 doesn’t offer the reverse herringbone seats that are found on the airline’s A350 the cabin is still very nice…..

Finnair A330-300 Business Class Cabin

Finnair A330-300 Business Class seats

Finnair A330-300 Business Class seats

Not all the seats in the Business Class cabin have aisle access but a lot of them do so it shouldn’t be too hard to reserve a good seat.

Bottom Line

I’m delighted with this news. I’ve always found the Finnair service to be pretty good and finally having the option to fly with them to the West Coast in a nice bonus (albeit for just a few months of the year).

If you book through Finnair and credit the flights to American Airlines AAdvantage you still earn miles based on distance flown rather than on the price you pay for your fare – that makes this new service extra attractive to those looking to boost their AAdvantage accounts.

Combine the good AAdvantage earnings with the fact that the airline offers some of the most comfortable Economy Class seats across the Atlantic and you have a product that will be great news for a lot of US-based flyers…now all we have to do is hope for a generous sale 🙂