Justinus

I flew JFK-HEL in J in August and was surprised that no warm breakfast was offered! This "enhancement" is truly bad, because some pax might not want to have a dinner, but definitively a warm breakfast!

intuition

We've ended up here before, haven't we?

The business light concept is great if that is what you want. The trouble is, just like with the infamous concept of "meals appropriate for time of day", is that the airline by no means actually knows what their customers would like (or what time of day it is for each customer).

Remember Finnair branded themselves as and airline "Designed for you". Doing that and then perform sub-par business class service because "everyone wants to sleep" is a modern version of the 1923 Henry Ford quote: "Any customer can have a car painted any colour he wants so long as it is black."

Sure - offer a light service for those who opt in for it. By all means, be swift and get the trays out in a jiffy. AND offer a proper J service for the rest, even if the flight is "short" and during "night".

ffay005

I added a Wiki where I hope we could list all BusinessLight flights. Added the ones I'm sure of. Please add your remarks – the list should help us know in advance what to anticipate on board.

wkndtraveler

Added SGN to the list. For details, please see the post 15 in this thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/26219900-post15.html

intuition

(deleted)

loimu

Just back from a HEL-KBV-HEL BusinessLight experience.

Especially the outbound journey was just a continuously growing disappointment even though I didn't even start with too high expectations. Starting from the Plat check in to which I was invited by waving hand. After the agent finished her story with her colleague, I begun by saying: "Hi! I'd like to go to Krabi, please." "Noniin." After a while I got my documents back and was wished "Hyvää matkaa."

After some premium lounge access challenges (we, AY Golds, arrived to the lounge area when it had already gotten half empty as the KBV flight departs at 19 after the biggest peak hour) it was time to board the plane. Evaluating customer service is my favourite hobby and I got a bad feeling of the inflight service right from the start. We were greeted at the door but that was the last hello we received. When the purser showed up for the first time she just shoved the tray with the pre-flight drinks between me and my friend without saying anything. After waiting a second, I said cheerfully to the purser: "Terve!", she got a bit surprised and replied to me "Tervetuloa! (welcome)". She smiled a lot but this was the first and the last polite word -such as thank you, sorry or you're welcome- I heard her saying to anybody, making her a bit peculiar person in my eyes. There were no peanuts served with the aperitif. On a flight departing at 19 there would also have been a lot of time for good dining but the whole event was over very soon, despite the fact that there was only the purser + one FA taking care of the whole dinner service, i.e. one person for each aisle. Everything else except the dessert was served simultaneously on the same tray - as per the Light concept. No refills nor anything extra offered during the whole flight (except for a refill for my morning coffee after the 6 rows in front of me had been cleaned up). When the purser was collecting my dinner tray I tried to be funny by saying "Just for the record, I didn't steal your cotton napkin, I just never got one." (Unlike the others, I got a paper one, including one fork only.) She replied by saying "Oh, I didn't notice that, you should have gotten one and disappeared with the tray". During the flight, crisps and red wine (without any glasses) were put on view in the corner of the galley. Of course the FAs are never that far away, so it wasn't a big problem to get the drinks we needed.

On our flight back with only 3 passengers in C the staff was super attentive and pleasant. Also due to low number of passengers the dining times were "on demand" basis, which was very nice. The meals were really sub-par. There was no printed menu available but the choices for main courses were the tempting alternatives called "Meat and potato" or "Chicken and rice". The second meal had no alternatives for main course and it was chicken pad thai, which was just a tasteless mess of noodles and chicken. Salad and cheeses were the same during both meals but this may also have been due to the lack of coordination between different FAs instead of being intentional. Anyway, snacks, sweets, extra desserts etc. were offered several times so being hungry or thirsty was absolutely not an issue during this flight.

It was amazing to see how dirty the A330 cabins were. Departing KBV, there were still the previous passenger's bread crumbs between the table and coffee stains on the surface between the seats - but more importantly the whole cabin seemed really to be under a layer of filth, desperately in need of good, deep cleaning.

Purjelentaja

Interesting to read. And very sad. They obviously don't know the importance of consistency. If it is business class, on whatever route, the concept should be the same, regardless of if it is more leisure oriented or business oriented route.

I think this experience deserves a good and thorough feedback letter, not just a good report here, as without enough of negative feedback, they prob don't understand how important quality and consistency is to the brand! If they are going to have the best business class product of Europe, they definately have a long way to go!

loimu

Thanks Purjelentäjä! I did also write to AY, addressing both the exceptionally good FAs on the inbound flight as well as the issues with the in-flight dining both ways. I used the web form and got a reply within 2 hours. Two boilerplate answers were copy-pasted to it and they gave me a compensation of 5000 points for the shortcomings with the dining experience.

Btw, I gave the purser compliments for her and her colleagues' good service already during the flight. She was extremely grateful and she spread her hands wide open when hearing the feedback and if I hadn't been seated I'm sure she would have hugged me.

EDIT:
Correction: Reading the email from AY again - actually, they gave me the points as a "thank you for constructive and friendly feedback", not as a compensation for any dining issues.

WilcoRoger

Without commenting on the rest, this is something I would wish for Asian flights. I always move my clock to destination time on board, so I (would) prefer to have a quick dinner and sleep asap to minimize jetlag. Instead often I'm cursed with glacial speed service, when it might take 2,5 hrs to finish dinner service, with long periods of nothing happening, empty dishes/trays not collected, etc.

Purjelentaja

There we come again to individual needs, which can be very different, but on the other hand, when travelling in business class, one can expect those individual needs to be met! To meet those different needs, meal concept should be such that it allows either very quick dining (for instance one tray concept as soon as possible after departure), or for those desiring to enjoy a proper dinner, it should be as close to good restaurant experience as possible. And naturally dine-on-demand.

I wish Finnair finally would listen to customers in this issue and design the service concept so that it allows meeting those individual needs, but I'm afraid it will not happen

intuition

Post of the day.

For an airline branding itself as "designed for you" Finnair is surprisingly deaf when it comes to listen to customer's individual needs.

DALtoAAL

I only have two words for this: QATAR AIRWAYS!

More seriously, I think it's really sad that Finnair long-haul business class is such a garbage (it is!) as it is nowadays. Since Finnair is relatively small airline compared to really big carriers such as ME3, BA, AF, LH, etc. they could easily do spectacular, quirky, sexy and smart business class product which would lure passengers from traditional airlines to experience something totally different. But no, Finnair has chosen other path, just do the bare minimum and hope that cost conscious business travelers don't mind about the shortcomings. Finns are often referred being the most innovative and creative nation in the world, so how come none of that creativeness hasn't found it's way to Finnair's long haul business class?

Now it's just (way too often) tired and sour crew, boring catering, weird ife and average seat (I'm referring to A330/340 fleet, haven't been on A350 yet, hopefully that is a notch better). And it is not just about the money, there are many things Finnair could do to differentiate their product without any additional cost. Of course, throw in some additional money and make the product even more spectacular! But mostly, it is small things that matter and usually fixing them doesn't cost money, it just needs the change of attitude.

valolla

I can only fully agree of all what you wrote here. After a long time time Asian flights with Finnair and the last 3 1/2 half with Qatar the differnce is like day and night.

Half as writing this from Philippines and coming from Helsinki via Doha by Qatar.

During the years sent numerous times feedback to Finnair but feel it's like the other state owned companies. "We know better".

I did take a the HKI-HKG-HKI with A350 but it also was a total disapointment. All same issues as in A330/340 and even the J seat layout was sad suprise compared to others like Qatar.

How the get the message to Finnair? Others can try, I've used my ways.

I'm betting on that the company will be bought out in 2-4 years.

heatsink

IMHO this is a Finnish problem in general, but it's more subtle than that. It's related to the idea that we love rules, which in itself is also not the entire truth.

It's not that we love rules, it's that we don't understand why they exist. It's more like a cargo cult than blind obedience.

The way I look at rules is that they are a way of setting up a framework for dealing with large groups of people. I.e. a tool. But I am constantly amazed at work by how many people seem to see them as some kind of contract. The concept that rules should be changed the moment they stop working for you seems foreign to most people here. "But, but... we agreed on these together!"

Remarkably, this doesn't even mean that there's all that much resistance to change. As long as I'm the one pushing for change, I haven't found it impossible to make things happen. But like 90% of the people are so damn passive.

Same thing with comparing yourself to others. If I want to benchmark my organization (like for example AY might do with SQ), the question I'll be asking is "have they come up with something I haven't?". But the way people talk here they seem to be asking the question "what can we copy from them since they're an authority on the topic and we aren't" (BUT WHY DON'T YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF ONE???).

I repeat, there's only a subtle difference, but it leads to stupid results. I'm not in the airline industry, though.

WilcoRoger

Finnair - are you listening?