gaggia

Hey FT! I'm curious whether any of you can shed light on continuous delays on AY5 flights that run from HEL to JFK. Virtually every single connection in the past weeks have experienced a delay of a solid 30-60 minutes, and I can't pinpoint a reason such a delay would reoccur every time. I've noticed that gate departures often run 10-20 minutes behind, but that's certainly nothing out of the ordinary. The planes seem unable to catch up en route, and most take direct approaches into JFK and spend no more time taxiing to gate than any other flights. Looks like just 17% of AY5s have arrived on time in the last 30 days. Something is systematically wrong with ops here.

I've taken AY5 about a bazillion times and I'm taking it again next week, except this time I've got a 90 minute connection, which I'll certainly miss if these delays continue. I imagine requesting EU 261 will be nearly impossible in this case - they'll blame it on ATC or something else that's extraordinary, right?

Thanks for y'all's 2 cents!

ffay005

IME, AY5 is not notoriously delayed, so this must be something special. Since they manage to get the plane in the air more or less on time, it must be either wind (which is probably isn't, my LPA-HEL in the opposite direction had headwinds on the same day that shows AY5 delayed) or something US-related. I'll place my bets on the current US Government shutdown. ATC works without pay, they're probably understaffed as many call in sick, and I just read today https://thepointsguy.com/news/is-it-...ment-shutdown/ that 3000 ATC support workers don't work at all during the shutdown. I'd say it's a small miracle the delays aren't more severe.

You could try calling AY and proactively suggest to change your connection. 90 minutes is a very short connection at JFK even under normal circumstances. Now you'll have a delayed incoming aircraft and an understaffed TSA checkpoint to deal with. However, I doubt that Janica would be very helpful here. She probably doesn't know much about the US situation and will just tell you to contact ground staff at JFK

OH-LGG

Gate departure already late for waiting connections, winter time at HEL so de-icing needed ant actual flight time 08:30 - 08:40 so probably AY5 will arrive late.

AY5 today 08JAN19:

25 min delayed @ gate
Taxi, de-icing and lining up de-icing and runway: 20 min
Flight time 8:32
JFK taxi:8 min

So it makes 15 min extra for scheduled flight time (8:45) plus extra 25 min delay at the gate. Arrived totally 41 min late.

ffay005

That's a really short taxi time at JFK. Of course, the actual flying time is pretty long (because ATC keeps the plane in the air in a holding pattern when they are understaffed?). My gut feeling is that actual flying time on AY5 is usually around 8 hours. Am I right here?

LoungeEnthusiast

ylefin

Has increased flights to/from Helsinki increased the de-icing waiting time too much? Is de-icing capacity too low? On my recent flight the arrival flight from Helsinki was also late because of de-icing in Helsinki (AGP) which of course also led to delay in Helsinki arrival.

OH-LGG

All AY5 real flight times since 28DEC18 are 8:30 or more. So it must be weather or ATC

Between 01DEC-27DEC18 7:56-9:22 Source: Flightradar.

_ra_

florens

FlyingFinn

AY5 gets a *ton* of connecting pax from Russia and the Baltics. A delay on any of those inbounds will most likely result in Finnair holding back the flight as there usually are so many connecting pax onboard that rerouting is simply not an option.

deissi

Hi gaggia, welcome to the AY+ forum. Someone actually asked this on Twitter from AY and it happened to pop up on my feed. Finnair replied that there can be many reasons like weather, technical reasons, reasons beyond the airline's control. So AY's position is that there is no one reason.

intuition

Frankly, that sounds to me like a "customer service expert" didn't look into the case specifically but just answered with some standard empty phrases.

gaggia

Thanks for these responses, everyone! A couple more thoughts:
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That's a good point! The government shutdown certainly seems like a plausible explanation if it's resulting in ATC delays. But I did notice that AY5 is almost always taking a direct route into JFK sans any circling around. If JFK ATC is placing departure holds on AY5 at HEL, you'd think that competitors would be similarly delayed at their origins, right? Then again, SAS/UA flights from ARN and CPH and OSL to EWR boast much better on-time records.

Persistent winds could explain repeated delays over the course of such a long time, but wouldn't flights with similar routings (i.e. flights from other Nordic capitals to the East Coast) also experience habitual delays in this case? Yet Finnair's competitiors on similar routes don't seem to get delayed nearly as much on this routing. And wouldn't Finnair want to bake in some extra time for deicing on winter schedules since it's such a common occurrence at HEL? Seems like a no-brainer for every airline operating in the subarctic to keep their planes on schedule.

Do you think that this situation would result in a successful EU 261 claim, since a departure hold placed by Finnair is their operational choice and an avoidable circumstance?

As an aside, I was also on AY1336 from LHR to HEL on Christmas Eve, when virtually no passengers were connecting at HEL and the plane wasn't operating another flight after our arrival. Our departure was precisely on time and yet we were still delayed on arrival (although not much) to Helsinki. The captain claimed that the delay was caused by strong headwinds. My understanding is that aircraft can certainly make up time in these situations by throttling up, and I've been on several flights where this was the case.

Is it plausible that Finnair pilots are going out of their way to save fuel (and euros) over on-time arrivals when it appears that the resultant delay wouldn't result in EU 261 claims, and that's what might be going on with AY5 as well? I just can't square the circle why competitors on similar routes would be experiencing fewer delays than Finnair.

florens

Ultimately, this really depends on the scheduled flight time which the airlines define. For example, BA has a scheduled flight time of 2h00 from Zurich to London even though the flight time usually is only 1h15 or 1h20. This longer scheduled flight time includes leeway for ATC delays, holdings, etc. With this, one can depart late but arrive on time.

I don't have any details of AY's scheduled flight time calculations. Maybe they have less contingency than BA, for example. Surely one would think it would make sense to add 20 minutes or so in the schedule for deicing and whatnot (winter only, then), but then there is a lot of factors that play a role like slots, aircraft planning etc, so it might not be as easy as this.

FlyingFinn

Yes, definitely. I've successfully claimed a taxi fare of 100+€ (Denmark eh?) from Finnair when my flight to BLL was delayed by an hour due to waiting for a largish group of passengers from one of the delayed Asian flights - this resulted in me missing my bus and had to take a pricey taxi to make my onward train. An hour of course wasn't long enough for EU 261 to kick in, but long enough for them to feel bad about it

And yes, those were the exact words I used in my claim "It was an operational decision made by Finnair".

'OPR