Review: Finnair Business Class Lounge at Helsinki Airport

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I recently completed a whirlwind trip from New York to Singapore on Finnair, which entailed a layover at Helsinki Airport in both directions.

Prior to the recent renovations, I visited the Finnair Business Class Lounge in 2017. It was rather trippy, but I liked it a lot.

In the past year or so Finnair has been renovating both the Platinum (i.e., First Class) and the Business Class lounges. Finnair has just released a press release detailing the final phase of its non-Schengen lounge expansion with the opening of its new Business Class Lounge (see, Finnair reveals the completion of its flagship non-Schengen lounges). Many bloggers, such as One Mile at a Time and Points to be Made have written posts discussing the press release and displayed Finnair’s official photos.

I, on the other hand, actually visited the Business Class Lounge within the past two months.

In fact, my first layover at Helsinki airport on October 31st was about 12 hours, so I had a first-hand opportunity to get to know the lounge fairly well. There was still some construction, but most of it was already completed when I was there. I also visited two other lounges, Almost Home and Plaza Premium (reviews to be posted soon).

Nordic design lives on with items like Eero Aarnio’s ball chairs at the entrance to the Business Class Lounge

In the entry area there was table seating and further in there was plenty of arm chair seating. There were plenty of electrical outlets and there was a locker room where I stored my suitcase while I went wandering around the airport to visit other lounges and wander through Moomin and Marimeko stores.

The restaurant area was stocked with fresh fruit and salads. There was a limited amount of hot food – I particularly liked the soup. It tasted so good and soothing after a long overnight flight. The cakes and cookies were also good. There was also a nice selection of beer, wine, champagne and alcohol.

The bathrooms and showers were in the rear of the lounge. This is the bathroom:

Photo courtesy of Finnair

I used the shower and it was fine. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to turn it on, but after that, there were no problems. Well, except for the birds. The birds. There is a bird chirping background sound effect that plays in the bathroom and shower rooms. Until I realized what it was, I thought I’d walked into an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

As mentioned above, I also visited other lounges at the airport, but the Finnair Business Class Lounge was definitely the winner.

Other Details:

The Business Lounge is available to all Finnair Business Class customers, Finnair Plus Gold and oneworld Sapphire members when the departure flight leaves from the non-Schengen area and is operated and marketed by a oneworld airline. All other customers can purchase lounge access for off-peak hours either in advance or at the lounge reception. The Lounge fits 600 customers. 
The lounge is open daily from 5:30am to 12 midnight.