Traveler Says Hasta La Vista to Airline

December 16, 2016

in Delay/Cancellation Stories

On a recent flight from Spain to Sweden via Finland flying Finnair, I got a taste of an all too common experience of extremely bad service and a meltdown in service. Airline delays and cancellations of flights happen. It should be a front and center part of the business to deal smoothly with this, but this airline opts to wash their hands of the problem.

Flights were all booked on AY (Finnair). My boarding card had the AY code on it, and they took payment very happily. Only once the flight was cancelled due to mechanical issues did their customer service inform us – about 30 odd passengers in the same situation – that the flight had been outsourced by Finnair to a low cost small local operator, and we should deal with them. This small carrier used a service desk (one of those that help multiple airlines); they booked us at an airport hotel and on a 0800 flight the next morning… on Finnair! It seems they are part of Finnair group after all.

The next morning, at 6:45 in the check in lounge, it turns out the 0800 flight has no trace of the rebooked passengers. Again Finnair staff take no responsibility, and are even rather rude when people start to express their displeasure and insist that the airline fix this. Once again the option is to go back to the service desk and try to have them fix it.

Obviously the clock is ticking, and most likely the only outcome seems to be to wait the whole day for the evening flight again (this sub level provider has only 1 flight a day). Exasperated and rather flabbergasted by this total “dropping of the ball” by a so-called full service airline, I booked a flight online on a low cost Norwegian provider whose staff are friendly, have new planes, and provide free Wi-Fi. I complained online to the customer service desk of Finnair, only to get an AI response telling me that the flight was from another carrier.

Lesson learned: Use another carrier and hasta la vista Finnair!

{ 0 comments… add one now }

Leave a Comment
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *




Previous post:

Next post: