As part of a new review series, I'll be pushing out my reviews & recommendations of my favourite apps across the travel and lifestyle segments - as well as revealing those I can't go without. I'm beginning this series with a slightly odd one - usually you wouldn't expect an app from an airline to be the most useful. Sure, most airline apps are fine to get your boarding pass from whilst travelling but they don't do much else (apart from try to sell you more flights). Although you may be assuming I'm somewhat of a Finnair fan boi by now from the number of articles I've written about them...their app is genuinely one of the best in the industry, even if you're not flying directly with the Finnish titan.

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Who is the Finnair app good for?

Firstly, it's a must download if you're travelling with Finnair - quite clearly - and will most definitely do the job you need it to. However, Finnair isn't the primary airline I fly on - but, pre-pandemic, much of my flying was on their oneworld alliance partners including British Airways. If you are like me and focus most of your travel on oneworld, then you're covered by this app - and I'd certainly advise installing on your phone. If you're unsure if your airline is part of oneworld, then take a look here - although I'd be surprised if you're a frequent and didn't know about the benefits of this alliance.

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What are the benefits of downloading the Finnair app?

For my preferences and travel patterns, the Finnair app is the perfect app to be a hub of my oneworld related travels. The application is able to maintain a track of all these bookings from their partner airlines without having to switch between different apps. This is particularly handy if you're going on an overseas trip with multiple legs on different oneworld airlines. For example, something like this:

• London Heathrow to Tokyo Haneda on British Airways
• Tokyo Haneda to Manila on Japan Airlines
• Manila to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific
• Hong Kong to Sydney on Qantas
• Sydney to Los Angeles on American
• Los Angeles to Doha on Qatar Airways
• Doha to Helsinki on Qatar Airways
• Helsinki to London on Finnair

Even if all these bookings were booked separately, they can all be viewed intuitively on the Finnair app - making it simple & quick to keep track of where you're at. Its as simple as inputting your booking references/PNR and surname onto the app and it'll pop up immediately. This streamlines the travel experience on complex itineraries, and gives you a graphical view of your journey. An example of this is showing connections at hub journeys in a timeline view that is easy to interpret. Although it cannot process and hold boarding passes for partner airlines, it is able to link you out to their websites for online check in.

As travel begins to get slightly easier, its still not as simple as it was pre-pandemic. The Finnair app also aims to make this portion of travel better to with integration to their website feature allowing you to view what restrictions you'll be subject to in that country - or if you're allowed in at all. Meaningful features like this genuinely make the customer experience better regardless of the airline you will be flying within oneworld.

User interface

Connecting Flight Itinerary Interface

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Point to point flights and travel requirements feature

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High level flights overview, booking functionality and discovery view

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If you're travelling any oneworld airline, be sure to make the Finnair app an integral part of your travel toolkit. Unfortunately, no other oneworld app seems to have this same functionality in it and I hope Finnair do not remove it any time soon. Additionally, no other alliance airline (Star Alliance & SkyTeam) have apps with similar capability making Finnair a stand out (as well as their lovely Nordic design). In my next #AppReview, I'll be talking about another one of my favourite - TripIt.

As a reminder, this is not an advertisement and I have received no compensation (financial or otherwise) for this review from the app developer, Finnair O/Y. This review is completely my own view.