Travelling to Helsinki: Routes and some tips to avoid hassle

I believe, you should have visited a couple of travel agents by now and query about flight booking. So, as you might have noticed by now that the cheapest flights to travel to Finland is via Delhi either by AeroFlot or Finn Air or Austrian Air.
Following are the most common routes Nepalese Students follow while travelling to Finland:

• Kathmandu - Delhi - Helsinki (Finn Air) 
• Good: Cheap and Best, Very good Service, Transit in only one place: Delhi
• Bad: Very long transit (about 15 hours) while travelling from Kathmandu to Helsinki
• My Preference: FIRST
• Kathmandu - Delhi - Paris - Helsinki (KLM and Air France) 
• Good: Relatively affordable price, Good Service
• Bad: Transits in two places: Delhi and Paris
• My Preference: SECOND
• Kathmandu - Delhi - Istanbul - Helsinki (Turkish Air) 
• Good: Relatively cheaper price, Good Service 
• Bad: Transits in two places: Delhi and Istanbul
• My Preference: SECOND
  
• Kathmandu - Delhi - Brussels - Helsinki (Jet Airways) 
• Good: Good Service. Affordable price, Same carrier (Jet Airways) till Brussels makes it easy in Kathmandu and Delhi. 
• Bad: Transits in two places: Delhi and Brussels
• My Preference: SECOND
• Kathmandu - Abu Dhabi - Frankfurt - Helsinki (Etihad) 
• Good: Good Service and relatively less transit durations; Affordable price; 
• Bad: Transits in two places: Abu Dhabi and Frankfurt
• My Preference: SECOND
• Kathmandu - Delhi - Vienna - Helsinki (Austrian Air)
• Good: Very good Service. 
• Bad: Bit Expensive than other flights;  Transits in two places: Delhi and Vienna.
• My Preference: THIRD
• Kathmandu - Bangkok - Frankfurt - Helsinki (Thai) 
• Good: Very Good Service. 
• Bad: Expensive than other flights; Transits in two places: Bangkok and Frankfurt
• My Preference: THIRD
• Kathmandu - Delhi - Moscow - Helsinki (AeroFlot)
• Good: Cheapest among all above listed airlines. You can really can't find any other flights cheaper than AeroFlot.
• Bad: Many known cases of baggage mishandling, unfriendly AeroFlot staffs in Delhi and Moscow Airport; Transits in two places: Delhi and Moscow
• My Preference: FOURTH

There are several other routes via Dubai, Amsterdam (with Arke Air) etc as well.

When you are travelling is student season, so, most probably, you will not be a single one travelling on the same route on the same flight; so, it will also help a lot if you find somebody travelling along with you, if you are travelling first time.

Make sure, the travel agent is giving you connecting flight but not two individual non-connected flight tickets, since it makes a difference. If you are travelling on a connecting flight, your origination (Kathmandu) will be responsible for your luggage till it reaches your destination (Helsinki). But, if you are travelling on non-connected flights, your destination is just the immediate transiting point; for example if you are travelling via Delhi on non-connected flight, your immediate destination is just Delhi while travelling from Kathmandu, so after reaching Delhi until getting boarded on Finn Air, luggage is your own responsibility, and if you need to spend whole one night in Delhi, that is where the real hassle is. So, I suggest never to travel with individual non-connected tickets, specially if you are travelling first time and specially if travelling via Delhi.

What is the hassle in Delhi because of which people try to avoid traveling via Delhi?

If you checkout in Delhi and need to face Indian Immigration while check-in again in Delhi; there are several incident when Indian Immigration did not treat properly. They might have their own logic why they place unnecessary queries explicitly. But, some cases of misbehavior made people hesitant to face Indian Immigration. No means to generalize, it does not happen to all Nepalese who travel via Delhi. Hundreds of Nepalese travel daily through Delhi, but only few incidents are reported to be treated badly by Indian Immigration. But, if you do not checkout in Delhi and remain in Transit, chances of hassle can be minimized easily.

Tips to consider for avoiding hassle in travel

First, while dropping the luggage at Kathmandu Airport during check-in, explicitly tell them to check in your luggage to Helsinki and tell them, you don't want to collect the luggage in Delhi but you want to collect it directly in Helsinki. It won't be problem managing it if you have connecting flight. Even, if you have individual tickets (non-connected flights), you can request in Kathmandu Airport, since it won't be any difficult for them to do so, since your tickets proves that you are travelling to Finland but not only to Delhi.
Do not worry about the luggage now since you have already checked in for Helsinki, it is the Airline's Responsibility. It will safely arrive in Helsinki.


Second, after you take off in Delhi, immediately there arrives Arrival Immigration. DO NOT pass through immigration since you are in a transit. Try searching where is the Transit. Wait there itself before Immigration so that some staff of your airline (either of the airline with which you will travel to Helsinki OR of the one by which you traveled from Kathmandu to Delhi) comes to collect transit passenger to take to transit. Be alert, if some staff is asking or collecting transit passenger. If transit staff does not arrives within one hour or so, ask other airline's transit staff, who will be roaming around,  to update your transit and lead you to transit.

What happens if you pass through Immigration?

If you pass through immigration, it means your checked out in Delhi. If so, now you have either to spend the entire night in lobby itself of Delhi airport unless some security staff do not force you to out of airport since due to security reasons in Delhi, they do not allow to rest in lobby if flight difference is more than 3 hours. Then, you have another solution is going to some hotel of Delhi, resting for a while and coming back to airport before 2/3 hours before the flight if you have longer waiting time. But, I suggest NONE of these solutions. So, the best solution is just Transit.

If you check-out, there is a waiting lobby in front of departure, you can rest there as well by paying nominal price.


Third, take some Indian Currency along with you since you may need to buy some foods while spending in Delhi. I suggest you to take few noodles packet and good chocolates or cadbury in your purse or hand carry itself so that you need not to buy expensive foods inside the transit. You can carry maximum 4 noodles packets and 4 chocolates in your purse. Carry smaller Indian Currency notes since transit shopkeepers in Delhi says the price of the stuff seeing the size of your note and they hardly returns back the change. If waiting for whole night, you may need couple of hundreds to buy coffee, tea, samosa and some water.

There is also comfortable laying chairs in Delhi transit if you want to have some comfortable nap or quick sleep. But, the seats there are very limited there.

Before the flight of from Delhi, a staff will come searching for you in the transit itself. They will make all connecting formalities and brings your boarding pass and will guide you towards the security gate. Yes, you can trust this guy to give your passport and tickets. But, I suggest you to keep one extra photocopy of your ticket on your purse so that if something happens, you may have some backup proof to claim with.


Have a Nice Flight !!