Flying: Finnair A319 Economy Class Helsinki to Zurich 2015

After a fairly long queue at the security and a fairly short queue at the boarder control, I was heading towards gate 15 for the second leg of my journey.

Finnair 857
Helsinki (HEL) – Zurich (ZRH) 
Tuesday, Feb 04 2015
Depart: 07:55AM
Arrive: 9:45AM
Flight time: 2hr50min
Aircraft: Airbus A319
Seat: 7D

The seats looked fresh, with a great amount of  leg room, much more comfortable than on the previous aircraft. The load was rather light with about 60% of the seats filled, and I was the only Asian on board.

We pushed off from the gate at 7:55AM and had a long taxi of 20 minutes in the snow before taking off from runway 04R at 8:15AM. I had really wanted to take photos of Helsinki airport in snow but it's kinda dangerous to change seats during taxiing, so I guess I missed the chance.

There were some heavy turbulence 10 minutes into the flight, and so minor turbulence thereafter, but otherwise it was a fairly smooth flight.

I moved to the rear, where most of the seats were empty and snapped a few pictures of rising sun.

Rising sun from starboard side

Rising sun from port side

Soon after I returned to my seat, the crew began serving drinks, with a selection of coffee, tea and blueberry juice. I went with the blueberry juice, which was pretty good. On this flight there was no complimentary meals in economy class, though there were some options available for sale. 

We landed at 9:39AM, had a short taxi to the Schengen terminal and arrived on-time at the gate at 9:45AM. Since I had already clear European immigration at Helsinki, there was no further checks at Zurich on the way to the baggage carousel. It was a 15 minutes wait for the baggage and together with it I headed straight for the train ride to St Gallen.

Conclusion
The seat was pretty good, comfortable with a good amount of leg room. The service was friendly, and the sale of duty-free items was not as aggressive as previously thought. Nevertheless, it would be good if a light snack could be served, considering that the flight was during breakfast time.