Awkward boarding pass: Flight AY666 from Copenhagen to Helsinki on Friday the 13th (Picture: Planetskier)

Passengers booked on one particular Finnair flight from Copenhagen to Helsinki today could have been forgiven for having second thoughts about travelling – it might just be the unluckiest flight ever.

Not only did Flight 666 (the biblical number of Beelzebub, or the devil) depart on Friday the 13th, its destination airport also had the airport code HEL.

Oh dear.

Are you a nervous flyer? (Picture: Finnair)

Still, it didn’t seem to have put off too many people – the flight was almost fully booked – and the pilot seemed perfectly relaxed about the whole thing, too.


‘It has been quite a joke among the pilots,’ said Juha-Pekka Keidasto, who flew the Airbus A320 on the route. ‘I’m not a superstitious man. It’s only a coincidence for me.’



Nevertheless, the passengers booked into any of the seats in Row 13 may have been a little jittery.

Any misgivings proved to be entirely misplaced though – the flight kept precisely to its schedule, taking off two minutes early at 13.18 and landed three minutes early at 15.52.

Does it prove once and for all that superstition is a load of old tosh? Well, we don’t want to tempt fate…

MORE: Friday the 13th – The dos and don’ts of getting through the day

Doesn’t look like Hell: The city of Helsinki, Finland (Picture: Alamy)

planetskier