Flying: Finnair E190 Economy Class Zurich to Helsinki 2015

Arriving at ZRH, bidding my final farewell to the SBB Flughafen Bahnhof, I was pleased to find no one at the Finnair check-in counter. However, the process did not go as smoothly as I had expected, given the counter staff here are a lot more stringent then the ones I was used to at Singapore.

Finnair 864
Zurich (ZRH) – Helsinki (HEL) 
Tuesday, May 31 2015
Depart: 7:10PM
Arrive: 10:50PM 
Flight time: 2hr40min
Aircraft: Embraer 190
Seat: 4F

There was a change of boarding gate from A63 to A62 due to operational reasons, and almost everyone else had boarded by the time I realised the gate has changed. Then again, I never bothered with boarding early.

I can't help but to realise we parked right beside a Swissair 330 and what an apt way it is to say goodbye to this country. Soon the door closed and we pushed off at 7:03PM. 

It was a fairly full load, with all but a handful seats taken up. Then again, the E190 is a small plane.

A 2 hour flight would have called for at least some refreshments such as sandwiches or snacks, and if one were travelling on a full service airline in Asia there might even be a dinner service, albeit truncated. Well, guess I would have to make do with a cup of blueberry juice.

As we started to descent after crossing the Gulf of Finland, it suddenly struck my mind that it was the moon outside the window, not the sun.

Frankly, I was already used to long daylight in summer Europe, with the sunset at 8~9PM in St Gallen. However, as we approached the polar circle, the daylight was almost lasting the entire day.

We landed slightly ahead of schedule at 10:33PM. A couple of months back when I first arrived in Helsinki, the airport was stilled covered in heavy snow, and today it was lush green patches beside the taxiway.

Somehow I just felt that planes taxi faster in Europe than in Asia and we arrived at the terminal after barely 10 minutes of taxiing, pulling over right beside an A340, which is probably the plane that's going to carry me to Singapore later.