Getting around HEL
Helsinki-Vantaa is operated by Finavia, and it sells itself on geography: this is the most direct route between Europe and Asia, and the airport says its transfer times are among the shortest on the continent. Every flight — domestic, Schengen or long-haul — now moves through a single terminal building, with domestic and Schengen gates numbered 5 to 36 and long-haul, non-Schengen gates numbered 37 to 55. Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 were folded into that one building during a ten-year, over-billion-euro development programme that Finavia declared complete in September 2023, growing the terminal's floor area by 45% and leaving room for up to 30 million passengers a year — in 2025 the airport actually carried 16,980,287. The airport sits 20 kilometres from central Helsinki: the P and I trains run from a station built directly beneath the terminal, reachable by lift and escalator from both arrivals and departures, in about 30 minutes.
