 Poster: A snowHead
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Evening all
Just after some thoughts of people who have made a similar journey!
We are off to Levi at the end of January. We've got 2 flight options for the dates we are going.
Stansted to Rovaniemi (Ryanair), hire a car and then the 2 hour drive to Levi.
Or
Heathrow to Kittila via Helsinki (Finnair), jump on a bus, 15 min transfer.
Cost wise, both work out to be the same (after the car hire). Arrival time at Levi too, would be roughly the same as the stopover is comparable with the potential drive from Rovaniemi. I've never done a stop over and change before. It's an hour wait at Helsinki for the flight to Kittila so not too bad.
I'm very used to driving in the snow and up/down hills. But it is a long drive, in the dark, in the snow if we go into Rovaniemi. So I was leaning towards the flight into Kittila and saving the faff of car hire as well. But I'm just not that keen on a changeover. I just have this image in my head of any delay causing a blind panic/rush or worse missing the connection. I'm probably horrendously overthinking it!
But given the choice of the above, which option would you pick?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Easyjet have direct flights from Gatwick to Kittila
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Looks like Finnair have 4 flights a day (picked a random Saturday in January), so as long as you've booked both legs one on ticket through Finnair, they'll move you on to a later flight assuming there's space and you're not on the last flight already.
There'll always be that risk with a changeover no matter what though.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| Teletart wrote: |
| Easyjet have direct flights from Gatwick to Kittila |
They stop flying there on 2nd Jan. 4 weeks before we go unfortunately.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Helsinki airport is usually a very smooth place to transfer and it’s not so difficult. Your only potential issue is that when arriving from the UK you will need to go through passport control in Helsinki which post brexit can be a bit slow as (assuming you’re a UK passport holder) you need to queue for an actual person rather than going through the automatic gates. That said if you have a tight connection, ask and they will let you skip the queue.
Also worse case if you miss the connection Finnair will book you on the next flight up - finnair are in general very good with customer service. I’ve also seen them hold flights for 10-20 minutes or so to wait for connecting passengers especially if there are quite a few.
However the drive from Rovaniemi to Levi is really straight forward. I’ve done it by myself in winter a few times and it’s fine - just pretty boring. There is also not much on the way.
If you are self catering hiring a car means you can stock up in either Rovaniemi (massive supermarkets) or Kittilä (decent sized supermarkets) both of which are cheaper than the shops in Levi.
Both options will be fine. I’d probably go for the Rovaniemi plus car as having a car has other benefits.
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@Fridge03, we are doing similar in feb finnair but Manc to Kittila via Helsinki
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@Fridge03,
Did the Gatwick-Helsinki-Kittila (and reverse) Finnair flight a good few years ago (Pre-Brexit). No problem on the way out. On the way back, slightly different matter.
They needed to de-ice the plane in Kittila - and got it really wrong, so they had to do it again. This meant that the flight was delayed. We set off to Helsinki thinking we still had an hour to spare to get the flight to the UK....and then we started going around in circles - So much so that I swear we recognised some of the clouds...
The problem was fog at Helsinki and the auto-land system wasn't rated highly enough, so the planes had to have something like a three minute separation. After about 30minutes of this the Captain came on the tannoy and told us we were diverting to Turku (about a 20 minute flight diversion). I've never seen so many people hit the flight attendant button. The lucky few were on a connecting flight to Turku - so they were actually allowed to de-plane (with their luggage, I think). The ones I felt sorry for were the couple behind us who were on a connecting flight to somewhere in France. There was only one flight a week ... oops
When we got to Helsinki, we got to the Customer service desk asap. They immediately put us onto the next flight and gave us some food/beer tokens. About 3 hours late we set off back to the UK.
Moral of the story - Finnair customer service were brilliant!
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Thanks for your help everyone! Food for thought. A bit of research does seem to suggest both Helsinki is a relative breeze to transfer through, as well as Finnair being a decent airline.
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Ended up booking the flight to Roveniemi in the end. The scales just slightly tipped in favour of the direct flight, but longer drive.
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Glad you've got something booked! Just be careful not to blindly follow google maps - it has a tendency to suggest a bit of a ridiculous route up the eastern side of the river on road 934. The route you want to take is the road number 79 which means from the airport head almost to the centre of Rovaniemi (cross the river) before heading north. You will also go right past a big supermarket - K citymarket on the way between the airport and the centre of Rovaniemi. I think there is a Lidl almost right next door to the K-market.
You can also check the road weather cameras here: https://liikennetilanne.fintraffic.fi/listanakyma/?list=cameraPictures
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