Not sure if this is the right place but I just had a very bad experience with Finnair today.

I originally had a flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Helsinki with 2 transits at Kuala Lumpur and Doha. All together, I was supposed to be in Helsinki at 15:15 6th of April (today). But the flight was changed the first time to include another stop at Warsaw for 5hrs. The arrival would already be 5 hrs late, certainly not ideal but nothing I cannot tough out.

The real problem starts when I received an email saying I was changed from KUL-DOH flight at around 1:35 this morning. I got moved form KUL-DOH to KUL-LHR Naturally, I tried to check everything to confirm if it was correct and it was. In the email informing me of the flight to Heathrow, they wrote this so I just found some place to sleep thinking I will just have to wait 7 more hours (pushing the transit time to 11hrs) for the flight. I also tried to find an info desk to ask for information about ticket, accommodation and food but there wasn't any open in the terminal and there's no intruction on who to talk to either. The chat agent of Finnair also couldn't answer my questions and waiting for a human agent took an exceedingly long time (33-35 people in queue).

After I woke up at around 7, I immediately went to the info desk to ask for a new boarding pass. Here I was informed I needed to go from C31 gates to C5 (a long way, required shuttle bus) to reclaim my baggage, follow immigration to enter Malaysia and re-checkin (drop the luggage, go through immigration again). All together took me about 90 minutes with a lot of running and asking for favors to skip lines in between. All around a terrible experience not due to the things I had to do, but due to the complete lack of instruction or presence of Finnair help in all this. When I was at the baggage claim office at KUL, I met 3 people with the same predicament trying to claim and find their baggage to get on the same flight to Heathrow then to Helsinki. Somehow they made it to the gate on time which is incredible.

I should be home by now but instead, I'm still on the plane to Heathrow. When I get there, I will have to transit in 1 hour 35 minutes from LHR terminal 4 or terminal 3 to catch Finnair flight AY1338 to Helsinki. The flight I'm on is already 16 minutes late so it's sure going to be a lot of running to catch the next one.

I already filed a claim with Finnair about my case but I'm not optimistic they will respond on time with a satisfactory answer. I'm seriously considering filing a claim with the consumer protection office next if talking to Finnair goes to a deadend. I have read people with worse experience than this but for me, this is the most egregious so far. Would really appreciate your insights or stories about how you guys have dealt with stuff like this before with Finnair.

Lastly, I apologize for the rambling and bad grammars. I did say I want to lose weight because of Vietnamese food at home but I never expected it to be so soon and confusing like this.

by SaturatedBodyFat

12 comments

  1. If you want good service and treatment from airline, just choose different next time.

    Finns have to deal with this kind of things every time they use Finnair. It is part of their corporate culture.

  3. Finnair has arguably one of the best customer service in the EU of any airline. One of the few where you can actually talk to a person.

    Stopovers and using different airline (you failed to mention what airlines you used) suck. Avoid them as much as possible and expect this to happen on your round the world flight

  4. I’ve been waiting for more than 3 months now for a ticket refund. First they rescheduled my flight, then cancelled a connection entirely. I got my luggage 5 days late. So don’t expect much from them in terms of compensation…

  5. I’ve been waiting 3 months for a compensation claim from Finnair. They cancelled my flight and I arrived in Helsinki 10 hours late flying from Sydney. It was a horrible experience and they redirected my flight to London too. I can’t seem to get in contact with them at all and they’re not answering my emails. Fuck this shit. I thought Finnair was better than this.

  6. As other people already mentioned, File a claim! They are obligated to compensate such long delay. It might take a few emails but that’s small for the compensation.

    If I recall correctly Finnair already got sanctions for not complying with EU passenger laws regarding compensations and I’d think they are more inclined to follow through after that

  7. This sucks im sorry!! Finnair’s quality has drastically declined in the past few years, it’s honestly shocking. They used to be an extremely (and perhaps the only) reliable airline. Ive had nothing but had experiences with them this last year (unfortunately I’ve had to fly alot due to several family emergencies back home). Its really disappointing because even 2 years ago, i was haply to pay maybe 5-10% more because i knew i could trust them. Now theyre nearly as scummy as any airline, im just going to try my luck with the cheaper (and still shitty) airlines from now on. as consumers, we are really taking it in the arse everytime we fly, its horrible.

  8. As someone who lives close by you in the world the amount of plane transfers to get to finland affordably is insane. I’m tempted to pay more to do the direct to london from my city then to finland afterwards. Sorry you had to deal with this, it seems everywhere in the world has not the greatest airlines. 😭

  9. Same thing happened to me. Filed a compensation form 2 months ago and havent heard back at all.

    The service was disgusting also.

    Never disliked a company this much.
    I used to like them but theyve gotten terrible.

  11. Next time, buy from Turkish or Qatar directly. I have not been using Finnair since 2019 already, much higher prices for the same route, less luggages, even more expensive if you want to buy extra. I find 0 benefits of buying from Finnair.

  12. It sounds that Malaysian airlines screw everything since they moved you from KUL-DOH to KUL-LHR
    You should file against them not finnair since finnair has done nothing wrong on that case

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