...and in a twist of fate I had to cancel a non-refundable one-way AY flight today. FR plane went tech in Tampere with an 8-hour proposed delay - causing me to abort my daytrip to Germany.

I was a good boy and undid my OLCI (I read reports that airlines had refused to refund taxes'n'fees after a pax had OLCIed), and canceled my reservation at the ticket desk in TMP. Then I call the AY service center to ask for a refund for the fuel surcharge + other charges for my now-canceled ticket. Well well well, after some time spent listening to elevator music in hold I get told that in this case I get no refund, as the "administrative fee" is a whopping 50 EUR - my taxes + stuff was 58 EUR in total, out of which 10 EUR is the always non-refundable service charge.

This is borderline fraud in my book. I would've understood 10 EUR, even 20 EUR, but 50 EUR to process a frigging refund? That's just wrong.


I was not disappointed in the FR case - I paid peanuts and didn't really expect anything from them. I played the game with their rules and lost.

I was very disappointed with AY - I paid significantly more and assumed that at least I would be spared these ryanairesque scams - but looks like this didn't work. Bad one for AY... reminds me that I need to book some upcoming flights where I do have a choice between carriers...


Hopefully I can gouge out some sort of statement regarding the FR delay from them to try to get something out of my travel insurance.