Finnair: A PSA

So this is a public service announcement for anyone ever thinking of flying Finnair:

Don’t.

Minori and I flew from Nagoya to Helsinki a couple of weeks ago. We had 3 fun nights in Finland plus a full day in Tallinn before flying on to Scotland and my step-brother’s wedding. We had a great two weeks overall. Some hiking, a wee bit of shopping, lots of family time and perhaps a touch too much food and booze. A holiday, essentially.

Our nearest international airport is Nagoya (Central Japan International Airport - Centrair) and only one airline flies from there to Europe: Finnair. There used to be more, before Covid, but those routes were closed during the pandemic and never reopened. The Finnair route only reopened a year or two ago and then only during the summer months. Usually I would fly from Kansai (Osaka) or Tokyo. Four hours by train in one direction 5+ in the other. Not ideal but then we chose rural Japan and rural tends not to be equipped with international airports.

At the other end, my folks are in the Aberdeen area. Finnair fly to Edinburgh, not Aberdeen (2-3 hours drive). Whichever way we do it, we have a long commute to or from the airport. This time I was renting a car so arriving and departing from Edinburgh wasn’t such a big deal. We’ve never been to Helsinki. We made plans.

I have a few friends who have flown Finnair and they never said anything bad about them. We booked. 300,000 yen each, basic economy, return. That’s £1400, $1800. Each. Basic economy. For comparison, before Covid it would have been about 150-180,000 yen (£700/$950) each. Stupidly expensive but that’s the price and it is for a wedding.

The first red flag was that you have to pay to choose seats. Have to. We booked the flight as a couple but they issue tickets separately. If you want to sit together, you must book your seats and therefore must pay for them.

The second red flag we encountered on the flight from Nagoya to Helsinki. A 13.5 hour flight (we can’t cross Russia for obvious reasons, so we go over the Bearing Straits, over the North Pole, and down that way. Take that flat Earthers. 13.5 hours; one free (mildly) alcoholic drink. The (mildly) is on the menu. For those not used to long haul, assuming you’re flying a flag carrier (which Finnair are), even in economy you get 3-5 as standard and essentially as many as you want assuming the CAs like you and you can handle it. One drink on a 13.5 hour flight is budget airline stuff. A 125ml glass of wine was 9.50 Euros. Fortunately it was an overnight flight so we weren’t planning on partying anyway, but still. It’s a sign of the kind of service Finnair provides. The food was bad (I usually don’t have a problem with airline food, all those old hack routines are outdated) but fuck it. We’re travelling halfway around the world in a night.

On the way out, those were the only hiccups. The flight two Edinburgh three days later, also fine. It was on the way back, leaving the UK, that it all started unravelling.

We checked in at Edinburgh, all good, through security, about to go to one of the lounges (one free drink and bad food? Let’s fill up first). I glanced at the departures board and saw that our flight was delayed 1 hour 40 minutes. No mention at check in. No notifications from the app. I double checked. The Finnair app said the flight was on time. We had 2 hours 20 minutes to transfer in Helsinki. Helsinki is a small airport. This is more than enough. No gate is announced so we go to the lounge and hang out. Now the screen says our flight is delayed by 2 hours. Now by 2.5. We’re going to miss our connection for sure and still the Finnair app says the flight is on time. We’re scheduled to depart in 15 minutes, no gate has been announced, the airport screens and the airport website say the flight is delayed, but as far as Finnair are concerned, everything is fine.

Eventually a gate is announced. We go down. No staff. Like, zero. It’s deserted. Those elastic barriers that funnel people in lines are set up in such a way that no one can approach the gate. The screen has the airline name, the flight code, and departure time displayed… the original departure time which has long since passed. Suddenly two members of Finnair staff appear from the tunnel—I recognised them from check in—go to the gate, check something on the computer, and go back into the tunnel. They are literally hiding from us. They don’t want to talk. They don’t want to help. Actually hiding.

Eventually, just as we think the whole thing is going to be cancelled, they open the gate and announce boarding, so last minute that there’s not even priority boarding (not that we had it, stuck in cattle class, but business class privileges are the last thing to go in an airport). It’s every one for themselves. As we’re queuing, watching the staff refuse to answer questions and barely make eye contact (“They’ll deal with it in Helsinki.”) I get an email from Finnair, the first time they have officially acknowledged the delay.

We were definitely going to miss our flight. It would depart at 0:45, we’d land about 01:05. Therefore they had, out of the kindness of their heart, booked us on the next available flight. We’d be flying from Helsinki to Tokyo Narita at 17:40, and from there on to Nagoya. Two flights, not one, and we’d have to wait in Helsinki for nearly 18 hours. There are no daily flights to Nagoya so it was that or nothing. Again, out of the kindness of their hearts, they offered us a hotel room for the night with breakfast. I say the offered. They sent me a voucher and I had to find us a hotel. As we’re in the queue boarding. Luckily we’d already stayed at the airport before the early flight to Edinburgh, so I knew where to stay, or rather where not to stay (the Comfort Hotel Helsinki Airport. Just don’t).

It was a short flight so of course we could only get water or blueberry juice. We landed a little early, just in time, had we been looking in the right direction, to watch the Nagoya flight leave. We get into the airport at which point we learn that, of course, we won’t have access to our bags. Fortunately we’re both seasoned travellers so we have the essentials, but a proper change of clothes and my full soap bag would have been nice. We check in, pass out, breakfast, check out, hang around (no late check out on the Finnair hotel voucher) and eventually make out way through the airport.

The flight is packed, every previously empty space filled with people we recognise from the Edinburgh flight. Miraculously Minori and I can sit together. In front of me is a Japanese man who immediately puts his seat back even though we haven’t even begun taxiing, and behind me are two Italian men in their 20s who are noisy, obnoxious, and far, far too tall to be travelling in economy (the latter isn’t their fault, but I am also often too tall for economy. You suck it up, you don’t take it out on the people around you by tripping them in the aisle, kicking the back of their seats, and generally being so aggressive with your movements that the people around you start praying for a midair collision. Another 13 hours. It was going to feel longer.

Reader, it did.

During the flight Minori’s blood pressure dropped. She has low blood pressure anyway, and the stress and exhaustion weren’t helping. She needed to lie down with her feet up but what can you do? We rigged the seats in such a way that she avoided actually crashing. I had my own troubles that I won’t detail, but it involved leaving my seat a lot and walking down the aisle, much to the disgust of the Italian man who believed the aisle was his private fiefdom to stretch into.

Minori finally sleeps. I doze a bit but mostly read. We land in Tokyo. I switch my phone on. The first message is from ANA who are hosting us on the last leg from Tokyo to Nagoya. Our flight is cancelled because of a typhoon. All flights to Nagoya are cancelled. I immediately get on to Finnair whose main port of call is an AI chat bot. Fucking useless. It keeps telling me the flight isn’t cancelled. I demand to speak to a human. I finally get something close to an approximation as we are waiting for our bags (miraculously are bags are there and fine). Her attitude is two fold: the flight is with ANA so it’s their problem, and we got you to Japan, what’s your problem?

Beyond the simple fact of how a return ticket works, it very much was their problem as the nice ANA staff explained. Responsibility to rebook lies with the ticket issuer. We bought out ticket with Finnair. Their response? We can cancel the remainder of the ticket and give you a refund. Great. That’ll help us pay for the 5+ hours home by Shinkansen (and 3 other trains) which could stop any minute because of the same typhoon. Minori still isn’t feeling great but is sorting out our train tickets while I fight with Finnair (in between equally fun things like dealing with Japanese immigration and customs who recently remembered they hate foreigners). Eventually we get on the Narita Express, change to the Shinkansen. Minori immediately passes out and I drink the cans of beer that should have been free on the flight by way of the beginning of an apology. We change in Nagoya. We change in Tajimi. Minori’s mum picks us up and we get home exactly 23 hours after we should have, 56 hours after our journey began leaving my dad’s house to return the rental car.

Shower. Bed.

Next morning, they want me to fill in a survey.

They really don’t, but they don’t know that yet.

They get both barrels. A day later they’ll send a follow up survey. I reload and give them another two barrels. I post online and immediately all my friends who had bad experiences with Finnair start sharing them. Now? Seriously? Why not before? That’s why I call this a PSA - don’t keep these experiences to yourselves, people. Share the knowledge; spread the disdain. They may not change but at least people will be forewarned. One of my friends in Nagoya messaged and said “I’m flying with them tonight.” Good luck, was all I could offer.

Then. And this is where the story gets really good. Minori and I both came down with what can only be a massive dose of food poisoning. Fevers. Cold sweats. Dizziness and… well, you know the rest.

I am writing this on the morning of Monday Aug 17th. We landed on the evening on Tuesday Aug 11th. I am still sick. Pretty sure I’ve lost all the weight I put on in Scotland and then some. It could have been the hotel breakfast. It might have been the lounge, but I doubt it. This is Finnair’s doing.

I applied for all the compensation I can think of and find. So far Finnair have offered 300 euros (55,000 yen or 20% of the price of one ticket). Not enough. They sent me another survey asking for feedback about their complaints and compensation system. I told them the truth: some of it is excellent. Once they admitted there was a problem, we got new flights and a hotel room in minutes. But that in itself is a red flag. If the most efficient part of your system is the part that kicks in when everything else fucks up, that’s not good. I want to hear people say “Oh, I don’t know what to do, this has never happened before,” not “Yeah, we hired a bunch of coders to design an automatic system that deals with it all so our staff can hide in the tunnels.”

And so, dear friends who have made it this far in this therapeutic rant, unless you are actually travelling to Finland and cannot avoid it, I cannot stress how far you should go to avoid Finnair. I will never be flying with them again. Even though this will add kilometres, hours, and yen to our future trips to Europe; fine. Even though I loved Helsinki and would love to explore the area further; fine. It’s not a case of once bitten, twice shy. A 19 hour journey took 56 hours. Our return trip didn’t return us to Nagoya. The compensation is laughable and still to this point no one has apologised. They lied. They hid. They were affronted that I wasn’t happy with their service. That’s not once bitten; that’s fucking mauled. So yes, once mauled, twice shy.

Fuck you, Finnair. From the bottom of my still infected gut, fuck you.