Discussion: From US to Finland?

Can anyone suggest a cheaper way to get to Finland than
Finnair for $1800 round trip? I'd really like to go to WMOC this year (with a side trip to St. Petersburg) and saving some $$ on the airfare would make it more doable.

Hmm.... a non-trivial route-opimization problem I believe is what this is called.

You can definitely get there cheaper -- the trick is to change airlines in Europe and optimize the two legs seperately..

The simplest option would be fly to London Gatwick on a cheap flight (perhaps Air transat from Toronto currently from C$855 in July). Then change airlines, say onto SAS to Helsinki, which'll cost you around $C300.

You'll be able to get the cost even lower, depending on how much you're prepared to bugger about researching and flying into secondary airports.

In particular, you'll be able to get a cheaper flight for the last leg if you change onto a discount european airline like Ryanair who fly to Tampere, and you might be able to get the Finland leg down to something like C$100. However, to do this, you'll have to fly out of London Stanstead, which is a bit of a trek from Gatwick, although airzoom does fly to Stanstead once or twice a week from Toronto.

It might even be cheaper to change in Dublin or Frankfurt (rather than London), where Ryanair also fly to Tampere from (and Airtransat probably fly to).

As I say non-trivial, but at least you know where to look now

Try using Skyscanner.net to get quotes from the budget airlines. Go to www.Ryanair.com just for the Ryanair network.

I don't think prices are yet up on the web for July for the discount airlines, but I guess you could give them a call.

Uncle Tim solves your problems.

Wow, that is expensive and strangely much more than going the other way in July, that is Helsinki-NY. But I have done some desperate things to get back and forth to Finland on a low budget. There are low-cost airlines operating within Europe with connections from Finland to, at least, England, Germany, France, Italy. If you book these far enough in advance you can travel for 20-50 euro one way. For example, I have used German Wings to travel to Cologne, then on to Munich, and from there a much cheaper flight to the US. There is a nice Tampere-London connection for Ryanair, although I didn't see any available flights in July. BUT I must admit I have spent a few nights in airports to manage this, and often the journey has been much longer and with occasional hassles (like having to plead with Ryanair to take my bike). You also need to have time to fiddle around on various airline websites to find the right time and price. Where there is a will...

By the way, are you going to orienteer in Russia? I want to travel from to the St. Petersburg region to join one of the O-events there this coming June but I have no orienteering contacts there and last year when I asked a race organisor in Russia for an invitation to help me get a visa--so I could camp rather than be forced to buy hotel reservations I don't need. The organisor I emailed said it was too much trouble for them to get the official stamps.

Ok I posted then saw everything I wrote is redundant since someone else just wrote the same stuff...

One trick that my family discovered this summer is flying into Manchester (which is often the cheapest European airport to fly to, at least from Canada). I just checked on Air Transat and it's at least $200 cheaper to fly into Manchester than London. I'm not entirely sure why we are talking about flights from Canada but just to put this out there the three airlines I know of that fly from Canada to Manchester are Zoom, Air Transat, and Air Canada.

Once you get to Manchester you can take public transportation to the Liverpool airport, which conveniently is one the cities that Ryanair flies to Tampere from. I forget the exact details about the transfer since it was my mom and sister who went that way, but they made it sound really easy and not very expensive. There were a couple options depending on the amount of time you had and how much you wanted to spend, ranging from pulbic transportation all the way to cabs. I think the distance between the two airports is about 30 miles. Please email me if you would like more details.

I brought up Canada, as its cheaper to fly to the UK from Toronto than Buffalo. Good spot on the Mancs/Liverpool transfer.

Check out the times and rates of flyglobespan. They start flying out of Hamilton's airport (YHM) in May. www.flyhi.ca

Hamilton, ON to London Standsted on Flyglobespan
London, Standsted to Tampere, Finland on RyanAir

I'm not sure whether there is a decent connection or not but it is probably the cheapest way to Fennoscandia from southern Ontario/upstate NY.

Thanks everybody for the suggestions. Now I know where to start looking.

Riku - no I did not plan to orienteer in Russia. St. Pete would be a treat for my (non-orienteering) wife for putting up with a week in Ruka.

Can't offer cheap route choice but good for you, Dave, to get to Finland for this WMOC - will be alot different & tougher I'd guess than last summer in Austria...'Scandies' by the thousands on home turf. I'm going to spend some summer time afloat - both '05 (Scotland 6d) & last summer were expensive O vacations - as if yachting is any less affordable than Europe O vacations-:)

We got better fares to WMOC by breaking the flights up as Tim suggested above. But we also learned that the U.S./North American travel sites don't give you the best flight options or prices for intra-European travel.

We ended up booking the US - Europe leg (we're flying from Dallas to Chicago to Copenhagen) on Expedia, and the intra-European legs (Tom has a side jaunt to Zurich for a conference, then we meet in Sweden for O Ringen) on ebookers.com and openjet.com.

Pretty comical -- we had both computers going, booking different legs simultaneously on different sites. Got a call from Citibank within 30 minutes wondering if someone stole our credit card.

Hey Bob, maybe we should sail over.

I don't quite understand why Finnair at $1800 is the reference price for this. They are actually the most expensive scheduled airline for Buffalo/Helsinki as of now - Lufthansa is under $1100 all in (via Dulles and Frankfurt or Philadelphia and Frankfurt). There is a big advantage to buying on the same ticket, since if something goes wrong and you miss your connection on the same ticket then the airlines are obligated to rebook you at their expense, whereas if you are transferring to a different airline on a separate ticket, then it is your problem. Therefore if you are ever connecting same day then you should either allow an extremely long connecting time (6+ hours, minimum, for transatlantic, at the point of transfer between the two tickets) or buy on the same ticket and regard the slightly higher fare as the price of peace of mind.

Yes, there is a non-trivial money and time expenditure involved with getting an official invitation for someone to visit Russia. That's why the 2004 JWOC was moved. I can get an invitation for an interested Attackpointer.

When I last traveled to Norway (on business), I went on two tickets, one Calgary-Heathrow on BA, and the other Heathrow-Oslo on British Midland. A single combined ticket would have cost more, or was not possible, or something. But the travel agent did something that made it so that if the BA flight was delayed, BMI would deal with the misconnection and still honour the (non-refundable) ticket. It involved registering one ticket with the other somehow. Maybe one of the travel agency gurus knows what she did and can explain it better. (I don't know why it was possible in that circumstance. And I would be surprised if it works with discount or charter airlines.)

Yea, I think my parents missed a ryanair flight too cause of a bad connection and they got it sorted out really easily. I shall ask them the details next time I talk to them.

This report indicates travel through UK will have a substantially higher "eco" tax soon, like double to $78/ from US. So plan accordingly.

Interesting that Finnair is so expensive from North America when in recent years it's often been one of the cheaper options from Australia (connecting with Qantas in Bangkok or Singapore). I used Helsinki as the main hub for my European travels last summer and paid A$2500 (about US$2000) for Melbourne-Helsinki with a side flight anywhere in Europe.

Maybe they're trying to keep us Yanks out. :-)

Is it any wonder? One American almost won Forssa Games last summer, so we know now how well an average North American runs in our terrains. And the man looked quite sluggish with his beard, so there must be lots of faster ones out there. We would like to get at a medal or two you know.

Yes, but if you took off that American's shoes and took a good hard look at his feet, you would see that, genetically speaking, he is made of "the troll stuff", and so that would mark him as rather exceptional in that regard. Plus, his beard only looks sluggish. Actually it's an incredibly high tech, aer-dyno design that allows him to slice through humid lowland environments with minimal drag, whilst at the same time directing cooling air flows to sensitive body areas subject to critical overheating. He is the envy of all the O' women and even ZZ Top, since he has the beard they can't have. Finally, you have maybe not seen his "stealth leotard" whose legendary properties are practically magic.

Hey Tundra/Desert, I would genuinely like to go to one of the events in June, like Karelian Rocks. I'm a US citizen but living in Finland... I would be VERY pleased if I could get an invitation from someone.
One other problem I could use advice on is how to handle registration once there. Last time I had to pay a big "penalty" at the border because I couldn't find anybody to register my visa in Russia outside of hotels in big cities. Actually if it was easier to go, I would like to visit regularly for paddling trips in Karelia.

Riku—You should just pay for your first night's stay at a hotel in Vyborg or St. Petersburg and register there. The official info says "Hotels which have the right to register foreign visitors are to register the passports of all foreign citizens staying in them, regardless of the purpose or length of a visitor's stay in the country." If you are not travelling outside of St. Petersburg region, this registration stamp should be sufficient.

I'll be more than happy to get your invitation. Could you please remind me after March, closer to the events? It does not take that long.

yes I will get back to you then.