feixing

There has been few news articles lately about Finnair leaving passengers stranded in outstations and them just asking to find their own way back (1x Rome, 1x Paris, wonder how the LHR is handled ?). I am not sure if the news articles are 100% accurate or not, but my own recent experience also suggests that there is a change in policy how customers are treated in case of IRROPs. Earlier Finnair used to be very good at this and I have never before felt being let down by them. Times are of course rough now and as suggested in the strategy thread the revenue management has miserably failed this summer so it may push also Finnair to seek additional revenue and/or cut costs.

My case: I bought tickets for coming Autumn for a trip to Asia. Not cheap tickets but not overly expensive either. There would have been cheaper options that time but of course I wanted to go with Finnair because of reasons we all know. I noticed in the web tool that my connecting flight was cancelled hence I called to Finnair to ask what is going on. This kind of thing has happened multiple times and I was expecting that it is very much business-as-usual that they find me an alternative connection. First agent was very helpful, however, she couldn't find suitable connection that would fit their 'policy' (earlier this has been very flexible, they would book almost any connection as a replacement) and said that she needed to talk to her supervisor. From that on things got more complicated. They insisted that they want to refund the ticket instead of doing the rerouting. Ticket prices are currently are higher now of course (it would have been 20% extra), but even more than that I am annoyed for the lack of customer service. I had to go through multiple agents before they finally agreed to reroute my ticket. Explanations why it could not be done were unbelievable and had even false information that I had to prove them with screenshots from online booking tools. Either some of the agents were really junior or it was used as an excuse.

Have been with Finnair already for many years as a plat member and reliability has certainly been one of the things I have valued in Finnair. I hope this attribute is not the one that Finnair is willing to sacrifice.

ffay005

I've been reading the same news items. In a normal situation, AY would probably rebook a cancelled CDG-HEL on their next CDG-HEL and that's it. But right now they end up with 200 stranded pax and all flights are fully booked so they cannot rebook on their next flight.

They prefer rebooking on their own services as it saves them money but even if they try booking on other carriers, there is not much available. And their outsourced ground handlers are apparently not at all prepared to arrange accommodation.

To me, it does not sound like the works of a good network carrier. If they don't have the crew and they know about it hours in advance, I am sure they can come up with better solutions. Send a widebody the next day?

What is your routing? Apparently you have some non-AY flights included, as AY can be stingy with changing those. It really shouldn't be the case. While I understand their motivation in trying to force a refund, it is their obligation to honor your itinerary. But AY and EC261 have never been good friends, and it sounds like that friendship is deteriorating further, day by day.

on22cz

Skamatr, so much lies and excuses after the covid service elevation. Saying that as a Lumo, I can't even think of how they are treating non-status passengers. Well, they probably don't get through to the agent, so it must actually be quite easy.

ffay005

What is Skamatr?

The bolded sentence actually made me laugh. What a service concept!

(During their recent strike, SK informed customers that they will compensate max. 250 EUR / night for hotels. AY hasn't given any price. I wonder what their policy is.)

feixing

My routing was initially via HKG with AY/CX, which is my preferred route anyway to most of non-direct destinations in Asia because of the shortest travel time, good services in HKG and good services onboard CX.

First agent was really helpful and said that there are many options (they have routing via all their Asia flights), most of them however include last leg with non-OW. She even mentioned possibility of rerouting with QR. Because she couldn't find routing with AY/CX combo she had to refer the case.

Next layers of agents pushed for the refund and came up with the 'policies'. No, they cannot reroute via non-OW, also QR is no go. I did not push it because I preferred to go via NRT. In one of the policies they said that it needs to be all-OW and cannot include QR. Still they refused via NRT (first they did not give any reason). In the next round they said that the reason is that the JL flight is not operated by JL. That I had checked before even suggesting it and had to prove to the agent that it is operated by JL.

ffay005

Sounds completely ridiculous. I wonder what the second agent's problem was. Terrible.

smartytravel

Don't agree on a refund. They need to get you to your destination. You may need to call again, or reach out to the social media team?

feixing

I got finally the ticket.

I wanted to ask if others have noticed the change in Finnair’s behavior. This kind of issue has been handled very smoothly in the past as it is very common with transit flights. I was amazed how it had become a problem now.

Pegasus42

I wonder if one of the factors behind this stance by AY will be the charges levied by partners when AY needs to buy a seat on another carrier for a re-routed passenger travelling on an AY ticket. In the supply-constrained environment of 2022, when prices and loads are high, one can guess the likely impact on bilateral charging between carriers. Perhaps AY is protecting yield by permitting changes only to fly on carriers that leave the AY margin intact or at least not severely eroded.

My own experience of Ukraine-driven rescheduling has led me to a similar impression to yours about AY policy – though you have extracted more supporting evidence than I did from the agents. I was dealing with AY on the phone in March (before the airport meltdowns) about a SYD-SIN-HEL-LHR return booking. There were changes of AY timings and some consequential changes from one partner flight to another for the SYD-SIN sector. Like you I found AY offered only a couple of inferior options including trip cancellation and refund. The whole thing felt like I was on an award booking, trying to get a reluctant AY to request partners to open up seats, rather than a revenue passenger with reasonable expectations about service. And I too found the agent took a harder and less helpful line after referral to a supervisor.

So I would say there is accumulating evidence for your proposition about AY policy having noticeably veered towards revenue management and away from looking after the customer when there is an involuntary change to the original itinerary. It seems like a desperate short-term crisis response and not a strategy which will help their business in the longer term.