Helsinki Vantaa Airport

✅ Trip Verified | What a beautiful airport! Food at the restaurant is delightful. Airport is clean and well marked. Staff is very nice throw out the airport. Great airport to fly through.

Not Verified | The airport hails their brand new terminal space & services but experience is not positive. The new automated check-in system for baggage drop off, even though not busy when we went through, was chaos. Travellers are doing everything themselves, with the assistance of ground personnel who are so busy helping everyone that you don't want to burden them further & slow as you are, get on with it. Why, in the 21st century, when everyone (most people at least) checks in remotely in advance, you can't just use your boarding pass to scan, print out automatically your baggage stickers & at the same time weigh & see off your luggage, I do not understand. Instead, you try to find a free check-in machine amidst the chaos of passengers, locate one, punch in your required details, print the label and then join the queue to drop off your luggage at a different, automated desk! Security used to be straight-forward & efficient, now it was an experience of being made to zigzag through paths (again, despite not too many travellers) to frantically waving staff finally guiding you to your place like cattle. Not a good experience either! When will someone actually start from the customer instead of the company's own processes & savings?

✅ Trip Verified | Main entrance to the main terminal is ready and open, and it does look very nice. There is plenty of room and space although construction is still ongoing, so you still have to bear with that but everything is almost done. Passenger numbers are starting to go up so there might be quite a rush in check-in and security but don't leave everything to the last minute and you will be fine. Some services are still closed due to covid but many shops and restaurants are open and you find Alepa supermarket before check-in for some reasonably priced food/snacks. Taking a train to/from the airport is very easy and convenient.

Not Verified | Worst experience at the passport control. The officer was very rude and harassed us asking every question he can ask legally. Finally started criticising the quality of British passport photo. Looks like he is very cross with Brexit. Otherwise rest of the experience through the airport was good. Due to covid duty free and shops were closed by the time we arrived around 21.30.

✅ Trip Verified | Shameful airport! They didn't let me out to the hotel (regardless me having an absolutely valid pcr-test), but constrained me to the transit zone 1 which is chilly and has no place to sleep. My next flight takes place in the morning, so I am doomed to spend a night in this messy place on some dirty cold bench. There are people like me here, some have children and babies. How dare you treat passengers like this? This was the last time to ever fly via / to Helsinki. Shame on you, Helsinki Vantaa Airport!

✅ Trip Verified | I have never seen such chaos and total disorganisation both before and after security. The staff were unfriendly and rude, especially in the security check. This used to be one of my favourite airports but now I just try to avoid it.

✅ Trip Verified | Avoid this airport if possible. The airport is still under expansion work (like it has been for several years). This means blocked doors and routes (both indoors and outdoors). Be prepared to walk very long distances without luggage cart and that escalators are not working. There are scores of gates but very few are actually in use (the most remote ones). When departing Finnair computers were not working so check in took ages and involved queueing three different queues. When arriving we had stand in covid control queue with about 500 other people in corridor for more than hour (even though we had filled our information beforehand in FINENTRY web pages and reserved the required PCR testing that is made 3 days after arrival).

Not Verified | This used to be a nice and small airport with a slightly over-eager security, but it's gone awful and extremely over-eager: 1. Terminal 2 (Finnair, OneWorld) has no human-attended desks to check in or even to do bag drop for economy. Only clumsy machines for both and a couple of “special assistance” desks with long queues. 2. Security requires removing *all* electrical-related things from the luggage: even cables and tiny in-ear headphones. Supposedly, according to news articles, this policy introduced in January 2020 is for efficiency, but does the exact opposite. It's a total mess and takes forever to repack. 3. The seating has been reduced a lot to make space for shops. Some gates like 22 have just 5 seats.

✅ Trip Verified | Not too crowded. Not too big. It's not well organized though not bad. City trains are available. Taxis are available as well. Staff speak English with difficulty. Not too far from Helsinki city center.

Not Verified | Very easy airport to get around. Good services and lounge area for transit. Finnair and HEL is now my route of choice to Asia if reasonable fares available.