Have any of the long haul posters here ever travelled to China via Helsinki? Obviously a more direct route than any of the ME3, even than LH.
In Oban
Have used them up to Helsinki but not done the haul east with them. Here good tails about them but I use LH for most of Northern China / Japan / "Stans". Southern China usually EK or SQ depending on where, and what else I am doing while. I am not a fan like Mr A Tis of the current CX offering, and to be honest do not mind doing the DXB two step as it breaks the journey a bit, and we have an office there which I have to go to often anyway.
FFMAN
Not glamorous I agree, though sometimes has its moments , and always tiring, but does allow you to meet some quite interesting people, and perhaps gives you a more rounded global view on things. I will probably miss it greatly when I have to stop. Maybe see you at the bar on EK sometime.
Re Jet Airways I would say they are in my experience better than most internal carriers in the sub continent but that bar is not set very high shall we say. Still use EK for all sub continent visits so internal flights only with Jet. In fact sometimes use the trains which can be fun. Could make T1 or T2 immigration more fun depending on arrival time. Do not think there is any chance of Virgin doing the route and probably would still stick with EK anyway as had experience on Virgin recently while doing route to Houston via Atlanta before I switched to SQ when they started, and was not that good an experience IMHO and SQ direct is very good.