Austrian vs Finnair

Best product each one flies

Scored on what can be verified. Service, food and ground recovery are absent deliberately: they need someone in the seat, and they live in the reviews rather than here.

One caveat on the Value line, stated rather than buried: Value is computed from business fares, and a carrier with too few of them does not get a Value score at all. Where you see a dash, we have fewer than three priced business routes for that airline and did not want to invent a figure from one or two — so its product score is the mean of three dimensions rather than four, and it is not directly comparable to a score built on hundreds of fares. The airlines with the most fares behind them are named on the business-class ranking.

Dimension by dimension

• Seat: level

  8/10 on the 787-9 against 8/10 on the A350-900 (AirLounge).

• IFE: level

  Screens, connectivity and power: 8/10 against 8/10.

• Lounge & bags: level

  What the fare includes before you board: 10/10 against 10/10.

• Value: Austrian

  Median premium over the cheapest carrier on the same route: 7/10 against 6/10.

What happens if the aircraft swaps

Both carriers are paying-the-same-fare-either-way propositions on some frames. The worst product each one flies:

Austrian: Thompson Vantage in alternating 1-2-1 and 2-2-2 rows. Recorded as no direct aisle access because the field means every seat, and here it is row-dependent.

Finnair: The AirLounge is a fixed shell that does not recline at all: the base slides forward and panels fill the gaps to make a flat bed. Unusual enough that it divides opinion, but the geometry - 1-2-1, direct aisle access, a genuine flat bed - is not in doubt.

Common questions

Is Austrian or Finnair better to Europe?

Austrian scores 8.3/10 against Finnair at 8/10 on seat, screens, lounge and fare. On the four dimensions we can verify, Austrian wins 1 and Finnair wins 0. Service and food are not scored here because they cannot be read off a spec sheet.

Does the aircraft change the answer?

Yes. Austrian scores 8/10 on the 787-9 and 5/10 on the 777-200ER. Check the equipment on your date before deciding.

Has Jon flown either of these?

Neither, so this page is product facts and fares only. Any review we publish of either will be labeled Researched until that changes.