Purjelentaja

I don't remember my hand luggage ever been weighted when flying AY, of which I am not sorry at all, as to my opinion weight of the hand luggage is not an issue. Of oversized hand baggage on the other hand they could be much more observant and strick.

Last time when waiting for my once again delayed BA flight at LHR to board, the gate dragon was walking around the waiting area and spotted my bag (definately not oversized) and tried to take it and put it in the hold, perhaps it is not just AY CI staff that have obsession! She gave up when she realized I was flying in club europe.

teme

I agree with both of you.

I think LHR to HEL flights have been the worst. Flights often full and still some passengers' carry ons are beyond belief. One time, a guy had an ice-hockey bag with him. Obviously not full to the brim, but still exceeding all the limits.

Eyrie

I've only had my hand luggage weighed once, too, in HEL, about 10 years ago. My check in bag was a kilo or two over, and I was asked to put my carry on bag on the scales to see if they would even each other out.

No luck, I still had something like a kilo over, but I had suspected it and said that I'd be more than happy to pay the fee. The grumpy man at the desk started a rant that this is not a meat counter, where you can order a kilo of meat and just pay for half of it! I repeated my offer of paying, to which he said that it was fine, but JUST THIS TIME

The situation wasn't pleasant then, but now every time I put my bag on the scales I laugh a little at his meat counter reference. So, bad customer service that makes the customer smile years after?

ffay005

I've got this exact same experience flying BA LHR-HEL. All I needed to say was that I'm flying Club and she gave in.

Justinus

Has the priority check-in desk disappeared definitely also at the other Finnish airports? At TMP they used to have one, but no more (it was very convenient as the agent could invite pax from the main line when no priority pax was there).

AY seems to be stuck to the idea of having only one priority CI desk and three for other pax (recently seen at FCO, DEL...). But with all the Silvers that line usually gets more pax than the others! What's the point of not having two CI desks for priority pax?

Jainzar

When did that change? Last month at TKU there was priority check-in as always.
Last time at FRA there was a longer queue at priority check-in of more than 10 people / groups but nobody actually had any status. So me lowly Silver had the highest status there and I advanced to the head of the queue.

And the priority check-in is an OWR benefit so not only AY+ Silvers get it but any OWR.

Justinus

I know that and I don't blame the OWRs. Well, this month I have visited TMP twice... So I guess the priority CI must have disappeared before my visits there. In April it was still there!

aapee

Priority CI was there last Friday at least.

On AY833 last Friday they kept playing some really annoying (and loud) elevator muzak on repeat on the loud speakers. About 90 minutes after take off they had enough of complaints and turned it off. Hope this is not a new idea of theirs for in-flight entertainment.

OH-LGG

I tried to change my SFO Special flight ticket from booking class V--->P and I offered to pay 200€ more which is difference between these two tickets.

I asked about this in chat and the result was of course you can't do it. Great. Everything is so difficult with Finnair.

But this was no surprise, I knew the answer before contacting AY.

ffay005

In the old days, it would have been like this: "Well, you know, this ticket doesn't really allow any changes... But let me see if there's something I can do about this. I'll place you on hold for a second... Well yes, we decided to make an exception for you and change the ticket. Can I charge the difference to the same card you used when paying for the original reservation?"

I don't know if they kept (keep?) a record of these special exceptions, ie would it have become more difficult if you were requiring something extra all the time. But in the few cases I had a long time ago, they were very accommodating. And I believe I didn't ask for anything unreasonable, either.

Now we just have to hope that a major schedule change takes place – then we could maybe cancel our tickets and book new ones, right?

OH-LGG

And actually I wanted only to change my ticket. I told that I dont want to sit in Economy Comfort, only pay for P-ticket. So after that change they could sell those 5 Comfort seats left like nothing happened.

Those idiots don't really know how to make money.

ffay005

I suspect that the chat people are the ones who sit in Kajaani and have never been on an airplane. You can't really expect them to understand something about good business

Do the platinum and gold phone numbers really take you to a dedicated desk or is it just the boys and girls in Kajaani who pick up? I wonder if you could get a better reply on the phone during office hours.

I really miss the days of the proper AY call centre and Ms O.H. who knew everything and could make wonders. Nowadays they don't even understand what the problem is, let alone know how to fix it.

OH-LGG

For lazy workers who just work from 8 to 4 (in Finnish: me ollaan täällä vaan töissä), it' easier to say "no" instead of "sure, yes we can fix it, just wait a second".

8-4 workers get their salary anyway, they have nothing to lose and this is one thing why things go like they go in Finland (päin persettä).

If my premium customer calls me and wants to pay more for something, I'm only ears and I'll fix it.

intuition

In all fairness, you are empowered to do so.
If you have a company with thousands of employees, you are going to have to set up policies, rules, chain of command and so on. It is less easy to make every worker empowered then. SK did it under Jan Carlzon, but that was also a time when they really didn't have to consider budget contraints.

ffay005

This. If I were a professor at the Helsinki School of Economics, I would make sure that every single one of my students will have realized this before graduating. Otherwise, they’d be doomed to a career with the S-ryhmä.

You are, of course, also right. But how about training your floor-level employees like this: ”If a customer wants to do something that our rules don’t allow but that as a matter of fact is only of benefit to us, then put it forward to your supervisor.” And then give those supervisors the power to bend the rules a little.

Of course, if you look at the rules book, OH-LGG had a non-changeable ticket and he wanted to make a change to it. Not possible. Case closed. But was this really the result that brings the biggest benefit to a) a Platinum customer b) the company?