Help! Missed Connection
 

Hi
My wife is travelling from BKK to LHR via HEL in Biz.
Her depature from Bangkok was delayed by 2 hours which means she has missed her connection to London.
The airline has put her on tomorrow mornings flight but they won't give her a room for the night as she isn't allowed to leave the airport
They've given her 25 euros voucher but told her she has to sleep in the airport.
I've told her the lounge should be open until 12am but I would of thought the airline has to give her accommodation irrespetive of Schengen ?
I presume I can claim compensation for delays of over 6 hours?
Is there anything she can do ?
TIA

There are no hotels in the non-Schengen area, so if border guards won't let your wife in the country, there is not much that the airline can do.

AFAICT, the only option is to go to the border check and ask to be let out the airport due to exceptional circumstances.

Is she otherwise eligible to enter Schengen? Passport/visa? If yes, she should definitely (try to) go landside and take a room. there are several airport hotels. Afterwards try to recover costs from AY or insurance.

If she's not, there's not much to do but rough it out at the airport airside. AY cannot override immigration rules.

She could try to claim EU261 compensation, AY will definitely say vis maior (and in this case they might have a point). Then if you want you can follow up at the small claims court.

They won't allow her to leave as her visa is for UK only. Looks like she will rought it.
Will defintely look into EU261.
Thanks chaps.

I don't think EU261 compo is due as the long flight time is due to unforeseen circumstances.

Duty of care still applies, of course.

Out of curiosity, does EU261 even apply here? Pax is travelling from non-EU to no-EU. (Genuine Q, not saying that it does or doesn't)

All EU community carriers are covered.

Unlikely. The passenger was delayed because Russia declared war with Ukraine and the following sanctions prevented Finnair from using Russian airspace. This is obviously an extraordinary circumstance. I don't really see what Finnair could have done differently here.

It's not the delay per se that grates me, its the fact that she has been dumped in a releatively cold airport (for her) with only token amount for food. Incidentally she couldn't find anywhere open to use the voucher and luckily she was able to get some food in the lounge but that shut at midnight.
She's a tough cookie but in circumstance like these surely she should had been allowed a temporaryr pass to stay in a hotel.

And also any non-EU carrier leaving EU. Let's say I fly ORD-FRA-JNB with UA on the first segment and South African Airways on the next. If my delay is UA's fault, then there is no EU261, but if it was SAA's fault, then yes. If ORD-FRA were Lufthansa, then EU261 is applicable as LH is an EU carrier.

That's not how immigration/border control works.

Deleted

This is definitely HEL's weakness. Of course, when planning a trip, one must always take into consideration what will happen if one ends up stranded at the transit airport. That is why I would never book a transit in Russia, for instance, as I don't have a visa to enter. It doesn't need more than heavy snowfall and I'd end up with 10 000 others on a bench somewhere in the nooks of SVO. No thanks. Similarly, during the early pandemic, QR was out of the question as I wouldn't have been able to enter Qatar if any irrops occured.

While HEL would like to market itself as a smooth connection airport, there are two main problems:

- Firstly, Finnish border guard is known not to make exceptions. If you don't have a visa to enter, and need one, then no entry. Heck, they even left Estonians stranded at the airport during covid because Estonians were not allowed to enter the country. Those Estonians could have taken the train and ferry back home, or stayed a night at the airport Hilton, but no exception. I'm pretty sure none of them would have stayed in Finland illegally :D

- Secondly, HEL is not a 24/7 airport. Neither is there an airside transit hotel, which would have been the case at eg. DOH or IST. Hardy anything is open in the middle of the night, There's a 24/7 grocery store – but it's landside.

While I'd be happy if half the world flew AY, in honesty, I would say that next time, if your wife doesn't have a visa to enter Finland, have her fly another route.

While I appreciate staying overnight in a "cold" airport isn't nice, you have to take things into perspective. Would you rather AY fly into Russian airspace and the plane possibly get shot-down? Staying at an airport isn't the worst thing in the world. And it's a good thing the airport isn't prohibiting this, cause else what would the options be? Re-routing? Waiting another day?

That's the prudent way to plan, but I'm afraid few unfrequent flyer even has an inkling of this (and neither do quite a few frequent ones) - I also have avoided connections in Russia in the last 2-3 decades (had 1 technical stop in DME, though on SQ's ARN-SIN)

OT - we seems to be back in the early 90's, when one advice was to avoid flying "to and over Russia and on Russian aircraft" - back than it was less to do about warfare than the level of Russian ATC, plane maintenance, pilot training, etc. These days state sponsored piracy and AAC fire is a concern. (including BY here)