Finnair or Swiss Airlines

Check on the connection times. Finnair has a good reputation as well as good prices, and I was going to take them to Russia, until my sister noticed the 55 minute connection between our flight from New York and our flight to St. Petersburg. Whether the airline considers that a "legal" connection or not, we both agreed that we would never consider such an itinerary. Looking at other Finnair flights subsequently, I see they often have very short or very long connections (as in 12 or more hours). If you want to see some of Helsinki, a very long connection can work; if you don't, I'd pay extra to fly with someone else. I just realized that you said your flight is operated by AA; this is called a "codeshare" and your flight is said to be on AA "metal." You're only flying Finnair within Europe. Your flight from the US merely has a Finnair number in addition to its AA one. My caution about connection times still applies. As for bankruptcy, AA has filed for bankruptcy protection, trying to prevent it from having to stop flying. I'm no expert, but I don't believe anyone believes it will stop. The experts on http://www.flytertalk.com will know all the details about this, as well as your questions about your route in general. I haven't flown Swiss either, but two different people have told me that connecting in Zurich is very easy and much more pleasant than bigger airports like LHR or CDG.

When and where (roughly) are you traveling? Hard to choose an airline without taking those important factors into consideration. : ) I've heard good things about Finnair, but I wouldn't be thrilled about flying AA the first leg of the flight as I generally don't care for domestic carriers. I've had nothing but good experiences with Swiss Air, and the airport in Zurich is a breeze.

In my opinion, you need not to worry about neither carrier. Finnair being the national airline of Finland has come a long way and offers a competitive product. Their hub in Helsinki is known for short transfer times, typically below an hour. I noticed you have narrowed your choices to only Finnair and Swiss. Without knowing your itenirary, my tip for an alternative airline is KLM via Amsterdam or SAS via Copenhagen. With KLM, on their website, I find it very conveniently to book my outbond ticket to one destination and the return from another, without having to pay arms and legs! Further, Amsterdam (and Copenhagen) is an easy (big) airport when in transit. Happy travel!

Thanks to everyone who responded. My itinerary includes flying from Chicago to Prague and returning to Chicago from Ljubljana, Slovenia. The connection time in Helsinki is only 65 minutes on the Helsinki to Prague portion of the flight. Since this appears to be a common practice by Finnair is this something to be concerned with? The Swiss air flight has a 100 minutes connection time through Zurich. Neither of the return flights connections are all that good. Either one will involve an overnight, but the FInnair ticket is approximately $500.00 cheaper than the Swiss Air.

Nancy, I've flown through Helsinki and I would not be overly concerned about the short connect time. It is a small airport.