FULL FLIGHT! Flying the A319 on Finnair's shortest route to Tallinn

[@pianoman4Jesus]

Wow!!! Such a large plane to make the hop across the Baltic Sea! Yes, we were on this Finnair flight, with a propeller plane. Every seat was filled. Still a pleasant flight.... "up and down". Väga hea!!! Landing at TLL approaching from the East. Always my favorite approach direction, as it was my first approach at TLL. Our HEL / TLL flight path was approaching TLL from the West. As that flight was descending to approach TLL, then it did a 90° turn from heading South to heading East, crossed Ülemiste järv, and landed. Personally I will always remember my first impressions of Tallinn.... that flight was from CPH to TLL. Plane flew past TLL to the South. Then a full 180° turn to return to TLL, land. I had scarce visible context as to how large Tallinn is from that perspective. I vividly recall the couple of houses built pretty much East of the runway (example 18:40), which we passed over landing. Fast-forwarding to a recent trip to TLL, coming via ARN to TLL.... that plane did a fly-by of Tallinn over the Baltic Sea. I was seated facing South, so got the beautiful fly-by of Tallinn, before then doing the same 180° turn to return to TLL for landing. Now I know how large Tallinn is. Thinking / contrasting to my first visit to Tallinn.... I might have thought I could be landing in Walkabout Creek, Australia!

[@Lennythewinner]

What a fantastic and beautiful flight! Thank you so much for sharing this :-))

[@aviationhel]

Thank you so much!

[@Suursaadik]

Hyvä video! 👍✈🙂

[@vriksonivanacostavelasquez7796]

At what height did it fly?

[@aviationhel]

We flew at 10,000 feet at our highest altitude!

[@freetime803]

Very curious what the cruising altitude could have been?? I only ask because I fly this route/flight plan often on Flight Simulator X and have always estimated the altitude to be around 5 to 10 thousand feet on the short hop... I know you weren't in the cockpit but thought you might have a better idea.

[@aviationhel]

Hi! On this flight we had a cruising FL of 100. We only stayed there for 7 minutes though, very quick flight! I looked it up and apparently FL100 is the norm, no matter an ATR or A319 or even A350, like some of them flew to TLL in 2020. I recommend you to look at FlightRadar24 playbacks, you can see detailed flight route, altitude and speed graphs! Happy swimming:)

[@freetime803]

@@aviationhel Wow thanks for the info! I've seen people use the website a lot on KZbin. I'll have to check it out!

[@freetime803]

@@aviationhel I bet you're right. Any flight between Helsinki and Tallinn will automatically get assigned flight level 100.