intuition

This is bad. I feel sorry for your relatives.


And it goes to show that irr-op still is haphazard. I am happy for all the FT'er that has experienced improved handling, with staff waiting at the arrival gate and so on, but clearly that is not SOP.

So they still use the "please contact ground staff that will assist you" PA, betting on all passengers to hear and understand that message and be able to fight their way to a transfer desk.

And they still use that distant Scandic, relying on the hotel shuttle supplied by the airport.

intuition

A little short on empathy today?

I think you need to get out on the town a bit more if you think that Scandic is a "nice overnight with dinner in Helsinki".

BTW, Finnair has made it their strategy to serve second tier cities in China, and with that strategy comes a lot of mono-lingual *) Chinese passengers travelling outside tour groups. If the airline wants their money they should deal with that situation.




*) Very likely not mono-lingual as they to 99% speak both local Chinese language and the common Chinese language mandarin. Most Chinese are bi-langual but English is not their second language

31570324

If a airline serves multiply destinations in china, they should be able to provide a chinese speaking service at their hub. Even if not in person, they should be able to call someone. They even have a chinese hotline, they could call maybe them to translate. Airline is responsible for them during a delay. Well, just my opinion.

ffay005

ylefin

Sorry if I was a bit rude. But I hope - as I understand you had internet contact - you told them to take a taxi to the hotel, and back to the airport in the morning.

Andaman

I understand you are worried but that can happen with mono lingual passengers. I have arranged flights for elderly Thai people to Europe via HEL, they only speak Thai. We knew there probably had Thai speaking cabin crew on their flight, but you can't expect service in Thai language at any European airport, that's not realistic. We had a deal if anything unexpected would happen in Helsinki they call us and we can communicate with the airport personnel. I can imagine Finnish passengers would hardly get service in Finnish at any Chinese airport, or basically anywhere outside Finland.

SuloL

Don't see them too often to be honest (not that I pass by HEL that often either!). But I do recall staff at gates of some China-bound flights directing & assisting people in Mandarin, wearing AY uniform.

intuition

As a general argument I would agree.
But there are several different specifics at work here.

The comparison with being served in Finnish is not really apt. First, Chinese passengers are not asking to be served in their native language, like Wu, Yue, MIn nan, Hakkaa, Jinyu or any other of the 100+ versions of 8 distinct and separate language-families. Mandarin is in the vast majority of cases their second language, like English is to many westernes.

Second, both Finnair and Finavia has made it a major part of their business models to cater to Asian and in particular Chinese travellers. So if any other airport/airline in Europe has the same pronounced strategy of serving e.g. Thais, it would in fact be very reasonable to expect that airport/airline to speak and communicate in Thai.


So why don't these Chinese passengers who can't communicate in Finnish or English choose a Chinese airline over Finnair? Well, they generally do. And it is Finnair who has made it their strategic goal to compete for these travellers. If Finnair reverted to the old strategy, shipping Finnish businessmen and sunseekers back and forth to Europe, then sure, keep up the good work with Finnish service only.

But if the Asian strategy is anything more than fancy words to fool investors, then they need to step it up.



(Oh, just remembered. Finland accepted the offer of a friendship panda... You 'll all be speaking Mandarin a few years down the line

31570324

Of course I did, but they refused to take a taxi and go with other chinese Pax. Don't ask me why, I don't know it.

You really can't compare Thailand with China. I haven't checked it but I guess AY has one or two daily flights to BKK, that are mainly serving western people going to spend their vacation in Asia. Of course also some Thai people will use this flights, but I just guess 90% will be westerners. But how about China? AY has multiply flights a day to several destinations within China and a majority of their guest will be Chinese visiting Europe, of course most will go with a tour group. Not so many westerners will go to Xian or Nanjing.
And also just checked Wikipedia, 27% of Thai people speak English, but under 1% of the chinese population do it. Would be interesting to know how many chinese pax AY has, but there are over a billion chinese and just 63 million Thai. That's a big difference. So if they make business with chinese, they should provide at least one chinese speaking ground staff member, at least in case or Irregular operations.

A chinese airline isn't a option on the Route NKG-HAM. There is simply no chinese airline serving the whole route.

They got a "certificate of delay" from AY. I never got something like this in case of delay. Hope this will make it easy for AY to pay the compensation.

Courmisch

Of late, I've had problems with the flight selection. I just press Connect to wifi button and do not select any flight.

flyingeph12

I've never selected a flight either. I was just trying to describe (probably unnecessarily) the location of the "connect" button on the launch screen.

Courmisch

That's a very skewed comparison. Mandarin is the or one of the native language for a large chunk of the Chinese population. And then there's the difference in writing system.

I think we need to be realistic here. 24/24h 7/7d assistance in Mandarin, Cantonese (and Japanese - probably larger proportion of Finnair passengers than Cantonese) is not very viable. And no matter what the airline does, there will always be that one passenger whose language is not matched, or who did not listen to the PA (at least PEK and PVG flights have announcements in Mandarin).

What they should do though, is distribute leaflet in simplified Chinese explaining the overnight procedure, at the transfer desk. They already have something like that for delay compensation. Additionally, they could probably put a sign to follow "Transfer desk" in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese, for staff to put at the arrival gate.

31570324

That would be a option, with Pictures of the path Guest have to follow to get to the Bus Station or back to the Airport. But they will still be on their own at the bus station or in the hotel.
BTW AY replied very fast to the compensation form I've submit for my parents in law. But they only ask for a power of attorney.

intuition

I think we are going off topic but not sure what is skewed in comparing English as a second language to mandarin as a second language.

While it is true that there is a strong trend in the largest Chinese cities among the youngest generation to be native mandarin, this is far from the fact elsewhere. In third largest city CAN I am sure most are native Cantonese and taught mandarin in school. Moving on to second tier cities, which are finnair's strategic target, local language most certainly dominates and not only at home.
Mandarin is an acquired language for these people. They feel they have already learned and speak a world-language as second language.


Besides, I am not talking about a 24/7 service, but a better irr-op handling. I agree it is not realistic for Finnair to offer service in mandarin and that is my point. There is a dissonance in their Asian strategy, where they target Chinese travellers but fail to understand what these travellers need. That will affect the outcome of that strategy and may already be happening.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/31051589-post36.html

Courmisch

I don't really see why Finnair should optimize for a non-English speaking customer traveling alone (or with only like customers). In my experience, Chinese (and before them, Japanese) usually travel either in organized tours or with at least one group member capable of some English. In fact, I think it is rather common that elder Chinese tourists are accompanied abroad by their adult children or children-in-laws, specifically because of language issues.

Sure, there is always the corner case of the old (or young) relative coming alone to visit an expat. That's not exactly China-specific, and I would think that that's not that big a proportion of Finnair customers, and not an essential part of the Asian strategy. In Japan and in many European countries, senior citizens don't know English either by the way, and Finnair has been shuffling people between Europe and Japan for about 40 years.