Turkish vs BA for Dubai DXB to Helsinki HEL? (In business)

Discussion in 'Route Planning' started by Gagravarr, Jul 25, 2017.

  1. Gagravarr

    Gagravarr Active Member

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    Quite a while ago, I snagged a very cheap business class ticket from Helsinki to Dubai, plus BA flights to get me to Helsinki and back. All was good, until the flare-up of regional tensions and the banning of Qatar airlines flights from the UAE (plus several other countries)....

    For my way out, I've managed to get rebooked by Qatar on BA, for roughly the same travel times. The return I can't get rebooked yet, but will be able to once it's 3 days (72 hours) before.

    As I understand it, the main two options will be BA or Turkish Airlines. Apparently it needs to be a BA plane, so the BA codeshares on Finnair flights from LHR to HEL aren't available for rebooking.

    That means on TK the 6:55 am Turkish flight, with a 4 hour layover in Istanbul, arriving into Helsinki at 6.05pm, plus the fun of doing an Original Routing Credit to try to get the missing BA avios and tier points. Or, there's the BA option, departing at 9:20 am, a 4.5 hour layover in Heathrow, arriving finally into Helsinki at 11:35 pm. No worries on getting tier points or avios, but the late arrival will make getting to my hotel in the centre of Helsinki less fun, then there's an early return to the airport for my flight home the next day on the positioning ticket.

    The timings I can weight up on my own. The ORC and can probably guess on difficulty. How about the business cabins, service, lounges etc? Anyone got a sense of how they'll compare?
     

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