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Flight 666 lands in HEL for last time on Friday the 13th

Finnair is on the skyway to HEL ... sinki, that is. Somehow it's not nearly as hot at the demonic destination as one would think.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
Finnair planes are grounded at Helsinki

The flight has fallen on Friday the 13th 21 times over its 11-year history.  

Markku Ulander / AFP/Getty Images

What better day than Friday the 13th (and in the month of Halloween, too) for Flight 666 to make a flight to HEL?

HEL of course, is the airport code for Helsinki, Finland, and Finnair's Flight AY666 took off from Copenhagen, Denmark, in the 13th hour of Friday the 13th, bound for Vantaa airport in Finland's capital city.

It landed successfully to partly sunny weather -- not the towering temperatures that might have been expected in hell with two Ls.

The airline had a little fun with the combination of airport code and flight number, tweeting some stats about the famed flight.

The flight has fallen on Friday the 13th 21 times over its 11-year history, apparently never once sidetracking into the Twilight Zone or a biblical apocalypse. It will still keep on flying with this route number 15 more times, but just not on Friday the 13th. The flight will be renamed flight 954 later this month.

But terror-seeking travelers, take heart: Finnair cheerily reminds customers the company will "still have a flight from SIN to HEL." (SIN is the code for Singapore's Changi International Airport.) No word on whether the airline plays AC/DC over the PA system.