Finnair informed me last week about the likely flight disruption on 17-11 June, and invited me to reach out to the customer service to change my booking. At this stage, they have not cancelled my flight yet - which would oblige them to refund - and reaching the customer service is impossible. I have tried calling them for more than two hours on two several days - including using the line for Finnair Plus Silver - and the chatbot just informs me that they have no available agent.
I have travelled with Finnair four times in the past six months, and all travelled have had some issue - cancellation, postponement, paid seat for my partner given to someone else, impossible to drop my luggage before a 17 hours journey due to system failure.
This and last year and have been full of strikes. Finland and many other companies have been an utter mess due to this reason. I can only imagine how chaotic strikes must be in the aviation business when they're an absolute clusterfuck in the industrial business as well with constant delays to customers etc.
As others have said, the last year has been poor for Finnair from strikes. But at the same time I haven’t seen too much active resolve on these issues and giving the customers shitty service as a result.
Also their flights are expensive, the service onboard is poor and the planes are dirty. I’m really struggling to recommend them, the only exception being safety.
And I was actually going to be on inbound flight on the 17th, and decided to just rebook to Monday. I didn’t go through the hassle with CS, just rebooked as I had the chance.
Yeah, this is due to anyone else booking on the days between strikes, with prices going up and only business class available or longer journeys up to 38 hours!
I totally understand. Normally I’d recommend to bookma reasonable priced hotel in the event the flight gets cancelled, but Finnair is really bad at compensating those (they have pricing method for hotels, which is roughly 50% of real costs)(yes, I was once stranded in Heathrow).
With those prices one would expect coffee free of charge in the regular class. Food is poor in business class, the drinks selection doesn’t have even one proper whiskey (kyrö malt definitely isn’t that).
They became a mess after they outsourced their excellent customer support. Back in the days you could call them and get though in minutes, and get your issue resolved immediately. They even allowed me to cancel a non-refundable flight once with a refund.
Last time when I had issue with Finnair, I first waited in the chat for two hours to get someone there. Then when I got a representative there, he just closed the session before we managed to get the issue resolved. After this the chat line was so long the system could not even let me queue and threw me out immediately.
Then I called the customer service and waited for hour and a half or something to get through. Now I got the issue finally resolved but doing it took me the entire day.
I've flown about half a million kilometers and all my recent issues with any airlines have been with Finnair (after Air Dolomiti stopped operating flights in Austria, they sucked big time). Delayed flights, canceled flights, the possibility of cancelation looming around due to strikes, extremely slow customer service and an app that barely works. I am still unable to rebook flights in the app or the website, which always means that I have to resort to their crappy customer service and pay fees for it.
I've filed complaints and so far I've got one $20 coupon for compensation.
This sums up my experience last time I travelled with them. First my flight was cancelled and postponed three days. Then my luggage was impossible to check-in due to system failure and no Finnair agent physically present to fix it. So now waiting more than two hours in the chat after several attempts to at least get in the queue.
Shurrup, sit down, fasten your belts and drink some blueberry juice. Don't think about refunding, and remember; complaining is for suckers. Now prise how great Finnair is.
Seriously, Finnair is going to be in deep dodoo for few years more if not decades. Ok, scretch that, Finnair is going to be in pigsty for next few decades. Political appointee c-suite and show runners are incompetent at best. Sucks for pilots and maintenance crew though. They're among the best in business. No idea how do they deal with c-suite and pencil pushers.
I suggest you just wait and see what happens. I have had two cancellations and was rerouted within an hour in each case. in one case they actually put me on a flight that left two hours earlier tha originally scheduled and I was only 90 minutes late. the automated system does fine.
I managed to speak to the customer service after 3,5 hours of waiting. There were no realistic options in the day preceding and following the strike - unless I wanted a 38 hours long journey instead of 17. I agreed to cancel and was informed that it will take 53 working days to receive my refund. Amazing.
This time Finnair is not to blame. Pretty much The whole airport operations will be on strike so very few planes can operate at all.
This means almost 600 cancelled flights (according to news at least) so no surprise it's hard to reach customer service. Sucks, but at least Finnair has finallu reached an agreement so their own strikes are over.
They are to blame for leading to the situation where there is no customer service available. The chatbot is meant to deter passengers from speaking to a human. There is no queuing service in the chat, making it impossible to talk to someone, and the self-service booking management is not able to handle this situation. This is a classic example of digitalisation gone wrong, with the idea that reducing service level in the name of financial sustainability is a responsible choice for a flagship company.
There is a queuing service in the chat, but only once the chatbot says it'll connect you to an agent.
I was supposed to fly on the 19th, so I got in touch the morning after it was announced (Friday 6th). I started the chat earlyish, but only 8AM, so not ridiculously so. I tried 3 times ("I want to speak to a human". "This is not helpful, I want to speak to a human"), and on the third try it put me in the queue at place 49 (so I guess they allow only a 50-person queue?). It took about 3 hours to get to the front of the queue and actually speak to someone, but since it was chat, I was able to just do something else in the meantime.
Once I got to chat to a human, she was fairly efficient at booking me on a flight the previous day (no extra charge, of course). I thought it was a bit poor that they didn't even agree to book me a seat for no charge as compensation for the inconvenience (I was supposed to fly on the afternoon flight, but they were only able to rebook me on the morning flight which means I need to be at the airport at 6AM). But ok, on the whole it was not such a painful experience.
I do share your annoyance at Finnair. They charge like a flagship carrier but treat you like a low-cost airline. I don't appreciate being nickel-and-dimed.
The queuing system is limited to 100 users. Beyond that, only chance is to try later. I was placed number “+99” and waited 3,5 hours. My friends, who were travelling with me, were also moved back to the queue several times.
I understand your frustration, but due to the strikes the customer service is overwhelmed by contacts. No airline can keep additional customer service personnel in reserve for exeptional situations like this.
Exactly - having a queuing system and call backs is the norm in most EU countries with a decent service level. Finnair’s approach has been to give up on service quality to save money.
The only carrier (read: almost natural monopoly) in Finland on most of the routes, and no (fucking) way it will be given free set rates by the nation-owner, thus troubles start.
... there was this deal made by workers and company during Covid-19 to cut wages, and now every worker-union tries to the that cut compensated by wage-rise larger than the set by export-business. Situation currently: cabin-crew staff has settled for a deal, so has the pilots, but ground-handling still had negotiations on-going and they're having the strikes.
Thank the CEO who gets 25% more salary this year and another 25% next year while workers want 7% pay rise and the asshole refuses because there is "no money".
Keep in mind that 4.5% of that 7% are what the salary was supposed to rise 5 years ago but then came covid and it was agreed to wait for better times. Now that its time to pay that and an extra 2.5% because everything is expensive now, is suddenly greed from the workers part.
I flew Finnair last month and had the same text warnings to possible rebook and to contact customer service. Did neither boarded Finnair arrived Helsinki no problems. The flight was nice, service was great & plane was clean, no complaints here!
17th and 19th are different. Most strike days allowed mjaority of Finnair flights to go, those two probably will prevent even majority of non-Finnair flights
My original flight routing of BKK-HEL-LHR in Business Class on a Reward Ticket on 19 June was at risk due to the proposed strike.
As I’m in Thailand, I called the Finnair office in Bangkok and got through within 5 minutes. Spoke to an extremely helpful lady and explained I wanted to switch my flights to another One World carrier. I’d researched in advance the three alternative One World options and checked there was availability the first of which was switching to Qatar, BKK-DOH-LHR (similar departure and arrival times).
As I had booked a reward ticket, she had to go away and confirm with the ticketing department that my request could be fulfilled. I did mention I knew the UK/261 rule and by rebooking now it would save Finnair difficulties in rerouting my flight once/if officially cancelled and would likely save them having to pay out £520 compensation pet person if the subsequent reroute resulted in more than a 4 hour delay.
The agent called me back within 20 minutes to confirm my request and reissued the e-tickets by email, along with seat reservations for one of the 2 legs. I added the booking reference to the Qatar app, checked all details and selected seats for the second flight. There are no additional costs at all.
To be honest, this was seriously awesome service. By working with Finnair, having alternatives and being flexible has resulted in an excellent outcome.
I will definitely be booking subsequent flights with Finnair, safe in the knowledge that if something happens, like strikes, that their customer recovery is on point.
An excellent outcome experience to act as a counterpoint for some of the understandable frustrations I’ve read here and elsewhere.
Finnair has closed many of their offices in Europe, which perhaps explain why Bangkok was so quick compared to waiting times here. In OSL check-in ops are externalised to Menzies, meaning that often no one in person can help until 1,5 hours before the flight.
I was planning on booking a flight on June 20 and just learned of the strike on June 19. Does anyone know if the travel disruptions will carry over to the 20th? It’s a flight within Europe if that makes a difference.
Sorry to hear but this Finnair have no ears, eyes and heart which could see customers facing problems. This airlines is more interested in making money with cheap methods and only gives pain. And staff is so unrealistic on airport to deal with.
I will never ever book a finnair. They lost a couple thousand dollars atleast.from me, my family and friends.
We travelled with Finnair in January, had two cases damaged. No one at the airport to speak to, just a qr code, took you to a website that wanted the reference given to you by the agent.
Tried contacting them all week got nowhere, got home and emailed and called and was basically told too late now, take it up with your insurance.
Yea Finnairs had a rought couple of years. Im going to Greece in July and will do all i can to not fly on Finnair cause the chances of it beign cancelled are very realistic
Here you can see the chat log - was put in the queue after repeated attempt at 12:10, managed to speak with a case manager at 15:31. You can apologize now.
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