uniquesituation

Hi guys,

Long time reader, new poster. Moderators: If I've posted in the wrong section, please feel free to relocate this to the correct one.

My wife and I just spent 3+ weeks in Europe on an amazing honeymoon that started in Italy and took us through Switzerland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Finland. Thanks to everything we learned reading through this forum, we ended up with first class tickets and 5 star hotels for a steal.

The trip was our "trip of a lifetime" and everything went almost flawlessly until we entered Helsinki-Vantaa airport in Finland to catch our flight home to the US.

We arrived almost 3 hours before our morning flight was boarding at the airport, checked in/dropped off our luggage. Proceeded through security and were headed closer to our gate to grab some breakfast (this was before 7am). Before we could get to our gate area, we had to enter through passport control. Both of us were traveling with US Passports (I was originally born in Finland, but have been a US Citizen for years and never travel with my EU Passport), therefore we had to enter the "All Passports" queue.

What I expected to be a quick-glance at the passport was definitely not. A line of 6 people took 15 minutes to get through, and I listened in on the lady in front of us. Like me, she was traveling with a US Passport but had been born in Finland. The Passport Control/Border Protection officer had a strong attitude with her, questioning why she did not have her Finnish Passport - she explained that she had given it up and after several minutes of looking at his computer screen, he later her go. My wife was next and his attitude continued, first asking her how long she had been in Finland (almost as if he had caught her being there illegally) - she answered that we had gotten there 4 days before. As he flipped through every page in her passport, she added that we had entered Europe through Italy on the 10th on August. He did not seem to believe her, motioning that there was nothing in her passport and went through each page again until he found the stamp. Next he spent a few minutes on the computer, and finally let her go.

I was next and when the officer saw that my name was a Finnish one, he asked me where my Finnish Passport was. I explained that I did not travel with it since I was a US Citizen. He asked some more questions and stated that his database only showed that I was a Finnish citizen and told me he would take me to the Border Protection office as they would need to investigate this. When he realized that my wife was my wife (she was waiting on the other side), he also took her to the office.

In the end, we were held for hours (til 3pm) while they investigated this matter and missed our flights - they admitted they had made a mistake (the US Embassy had gotten involved). The Border Protection/Finnish Government, nor our airline (Norwegian), would rebook/reimburse us for our flights.

Norwegian had no flights out for 2 days - we ended up leaving the airport and grabbing a room for the night to figure out the best approach (last minute room was not cheap, nor were the taxi fares back and forth from the airport). Just wanting to get back home, we booked flights with British Airways for the next morning and got home earlier this week (we did get stopped by Border Protection again leaving the airport and nearly missed our BA flights, they wanted to investigate why we had been stopped the day before - what a joke).

We did purchase trip insurance in advance, however it seems that their policy will not cover delays/interruptions because of customs/security/government situations.

I just wanted to see if anyone had any similar experiences or advice. Besides being very upset with the Finnish Government, I am disappointed with Norwegian for their complete lack of assistance and attempts to sell us higher priced fairs when we needed help.

I know EU Regulations cover delayed/cancelled flights, but is there anything that touches on situations such as these?

Thank you in advance,
J.