Tier Point Run to Tucson in Oct 2024: Day 7 – Helsinki HEL to London Heathrow LHR

The guy sat in 01D blocked me from getting off the aircraft first, but I nutmegged him at the first opportunity as we started walking up the airbridge at Gate 14.

From there, I jogged all the way to the central area, around Gate 24, before walking for a bit in order to catch my breath.

I love Helsinki airport – it’s just so clean and new! It was fairly busy in the Schengen part of the airport. That’s normal, especially on a weekday morning.

I jogged up to passport control and tried to use the automated passport control, which I am sure I used on my recent trip to Lis Angeles, but perhaps I didn’t. It rejected me and told me to go elsewhere!

So I walked over to the All The Other Riff Raff Passport Control, where there were two booths manned.

The guy I saw spent some time looking through my passport stamps and explained what the problem was. According to my passport, I have been in Europe for over 100 days.

I explained that I had just spent a few hours in Malaga and was aiming to go home. He said that no one had stamped my passport in Malaga.

He was happy enough to let me through, but I think there were some questions left unanswered!

I carried on jogging up the ramp, only stopping at Starbucks. The queue was light, so I forced myself to order my favourite drink.

From there, I chilled out a bit. My jogging had left a nasty cough in my throat. Even my coffee didn’t ease it. I thought it best to wander up to the gate from here. I now had plenty of time to catch my flight.

Gate 44 was not busy. Pre-boarding into the holding pens gad already started, so I went through and took up prime spot for boarding the aircraft.

As I noted earlier this year, these flights are not busy at all nowadays. Today’s was no different.

On into seat 08A and I was looking forward to going home.

What makes me laugh about the Finnish captain announcements: they are monotone and very curt. There’s no soft cuddly side to a Finnish captain. Perhaps that is a result of the translation into English?

After pushing back and taking off, I took advantage of the flat bed to grab some decent sleep.

I was well away, only being woken by the captains announcement that we had started our descent into Heathrow.

We had to hold for 15 mins, bur still not far off our scheduled arrival time. We arrived into Gate 22 at T3. An unusual one for me. This area of T3 is normally associated with Virgin flights.

It was throwing it down at Heathrow. Good old Britain!

Follow the whole story here: Tier Point Run to Tucson in Oct 2024