Stuck in HEL: Our experience with a Finnair flight disruption

The other day, my wife, kids, and mother-in-law were on a flight to HEL (the airport code for Helsinki airport). The itinerary was from Rovaniemi to Helsinki to Frankfurt. Unfortunately, the first leg got delayed such that it was impossible to make the connection, stranding the family in Helsinki for the night. Obviously, things like credit card protections and EU 261 came to mind immediately when it became clear that this would lead to a significant delay, so I wanted to publish a post about how Finnair handled the situation and the next steps at this stage, with the goal to follow up down the road.

The best-laid plans went awry

A couple of days ago, we were leaving Rovaniemi, Finland, bound for Frankfurt, Germany for a night before continuing on to Strasbourg, France.

We are currently traveling as a group of 5, consisting of me, my wife, her mother, and our two kids. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get all 5 of us on a single flight itinerary for this part of the trip. In order to keep things simple, I’m going to mostly leave my own plans out of the story because they aren’t relevant. In other words, keep in mind that I am not a passenger on the delay story, but rather, I was a helpful outsider in solving the issues. This post is mostly about my wife, kids, and mother-in-law.

This was the plan:

• Sunday, December 7th at 2:50pm: Depart Rovaniemi on Finnair
• Sunday, December 7th at 4:10pm: Arrive in Helsinki
• Sunday, December 7th at 4:55pm: Depart Helsinki on Finnair, bound for Frankfurt
• Sunday, December 7th at 6:35pm: Arrive in Frankfurt
• Sunday, December 7th to Monday, December 8th: Stay at Stiegenberger Icon Frankfurter Hof, which was an Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts booking
• Monday, December 8th: Check out the Frankfurt Christmas Markets and then leave on a train at 1:56pm bound for Strasbourg, France (arriving around 4pm).
• Monday, December 8th: Check in to our hotel in Strasbourg (which, at this point, was nonrefundable)

Unfortunately, that first leg from Rovaniemi got delayed. The incoming aircraft took off late and arrived late in Rovaniemi, which pushed them back. As a result, they only landed in Helsinki at about 5pm, after the Frankfurt flight had already departed without them. We realized well before they boarded that they weren’t going to make it.

I proactively examined options

I had departed Rovaniemi on an earlier flight (and I arrived in Helsinki around 3pm, well before they even took off from Rovaniemi). I had been communicating with the family about the delay as soon as they knew about it, so I immediately began looking at options to see if we could still get to Frankfurt on Sunday night. Unfortunately, there was no other option to get to Frankfurt nonstop after they arrived.

Connecting itineraries all included overnight connections. For simplicity’s sake, trust me that a nonstop to Frankfurt was the only option that was going to make sense.

The next nonstop flights to Frankfurt on Finnair were:

• Monday, December 8th at 7:45am, arriving around 9:25am
• Monday, December 8th at 4:55pm, arriving at 6:35pm (same as the original schedule, but 24hrs later)

Obviously, that second flight would be a problem. In addition to missing the hotel reservation in Frankfurt (which was inevitable), we would miss the train to Strasbourg, losing our money on that. Additionally, we would have to find some way to get to Strasbourg (which would mean arriving really late) since we’d need to get there for our hotel check-in.

I expected that Finnair would book them on their next departure (the 7:45am on Monday morning), so I proactively booked myself a seat on that flight (I was skipping my leg to Frankfurt in order to stay in Helsinki to help them). Only business class was available as an award, but I booked it via American Airlines with 22,500 miles and about twenty bucks in taxes and fees, knowing that I could freely cancel if need be.

Unfortunately, before they even boarded their flight in Rovaniemi, I saw an email come in saying that they had been rebooked on “the best available alternative” (according to Finnair) — the flight at 4:55pm on Monday afternoon.

We really didn’t want that.

The email went on to say that in case they didn’t want to use any of the flights in the booking and wanted to cancel the whole booking and apply for a refund, they could do it online in Manage Booking. I went to the booking to see if I could request an alternative flight, but I got a message saying that if the new booking didn’t work, they would need to contact customer service for other options.

Meanwhile, I found that Lufthansa had an early flight on Monday:

• Monday, December 8th: Lufthansa HEL-FRA at 6:55am, arriving at 8:40am

I didn’t know whether Finnair would or could book them on Lufthansa, but I noticed that the Lufthansa flight was available via United for 8,000 miles and ~$21 per passenger (or Air Canada Aeroplan for 7,500 miles and ~$49 per passenger). I figured that if Finnair could not get them on the Lufthansa flight, I could always book us on it with miles.

Satisfied that I had explored the options, I assumed that I had to wait for them to arrive in Helsinki for next steps. In reality, the very next steps were easier than I expected, but you’ll need to press pause on the flight rebooking piece of the story — I’ll come back to the flight later.

I expected EU261 to apply to this situation

Europe has excellent consumer protections in EU261 that outline the requirements for an airline when your trip is disrupted by the airline.

Many readers might be aware of the financial compensation required by EU261 when you’re flying an EU carrier to/from/within Europe and/or flying from an EU country. Airlines owe compensation for a delay at arrival if you reach your destination with a delay of 3 hours or more, if the delay is not caused by extraordinary circumstances. The amount of compensation varies based on distance.

In this case, I expected that the delay should qualify for 400 Euros per passenger (since the trip from Rovaniemi to Helsinki to Frankfurt is more than 1,500km). I am not aware of any extraordinary circumstances. The annoying part of that regulation is the fact that you need to file for it with the airline, which includes waiting for their response and (based on stories I’ve read) sometimes having to continue to advocate for yourself (or enlist the help of a third party like Air Help). In other words, I expected that we may not know for sure that compensation was coming for weeks or even a couple of months.

However, that cash compensation is not the only pertinent part of the regulations. As I understand it, the purpose behind EU261 is to provide passenger rights in the event of delays. Among those passenger rights is the right to care in the event of disruption.

EU261 includes the right to care, and Finnair (sort of) did a good job with this

According to Article 9 in EU261, my family was also entitled to care from the airline as follows:

Article 9

Right to care

1. Where reference is made to this Article, passengers shall be offered free of charge:

(a) meals and refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting time;

(b) hotel accommodation in cases

– where a stay of one or more nights becomes necessary, or

– where a stay additional to that intended by the passenger becomes necessary;

(c) transport between the airport and place of accommodation (hotel or other).

I had known that the airline should cover accommodation, meals, and transportation, but until this weekend, I had assumed that those things would come in the form of reimbursement as part of the compensation claim. In other words, I figured that we would be on the hook for finding and paying for everything, and then be left waiting for the airline’s response to a claim to get reimbursed.

However, as you see in the excerpt above, the airline is responsible for providing those things free of charge. This handy interpretive guideline of the EU261 rules explains:

Furthermore, passengers should be offered care free of charge in a clear and accessible way, including, where possible, via electronic means of communication. This means that passengers should not be left to make arrangements themselves, e.g. finding and paying for accommodation or food. Instead, operating air carriers are obliged to actively offer care.

I’ll give credit where credit is due: Finnair is (sort of) doing its part on that front. I am a little sad that I need to qualify that statement, because they have the mechanisms in place, but the tech does leave considerable room for improvement.

The final result was great:

• Before the family even landed, they had the opportunity to book 1 hotel room per passenger on the booking. They could alternatively have fewer rooms and assign more than one of them to the same room. This was easy to self-service.
• The hotel booking included both a complimentary dinner at the hotel and a complimentary breakfast at the hotel
• They had the opportunity to take round-trip taxi transfer vouchers to get to the hotel and back to the airport. Each person could have had their own taxi.
• Their boarding passes (for the Helsinki to Frankfurt leg) were each loaded with a voucher worth 17 Euros (68 Euros in total for the four of them) that was valid at a wide range of places in the arrivals hall

The fact that Finnair proactively offered all of the above without needing to request it is a pretty clear indication to me that they recognize their obligation under EU261 (which in turn makes me think that the compensation claim should be approved).

As I said, the execution left a little to be desired. Here’s what I mean:

• While still airborne, my wife got a text message noting that a 17 EUR voucher had been applied to her boarding pass. The text message came with a link to a list of the places where it could be used (which was excellent — more on that later). However, she was the only one to receive the text message. I wondered whether this was something they offered simply because of her oneworld status since nobody else received a text message. However, all four passengers had the vouchers despite the fact that three of them never would have known. All of them had phone numbers in the booking. No emails were sent about this.
• While still airborne, one of my sons received an email advising him of the fact that the airline was offering him meals and hotel accommodation, along with a link to book the hotel himself via online service with a personalized link. As it turned out, clicking that link pulled up a form that included all 4 passengers on the booking and enabled making all of the associated arrangements for all 4 passengers, but my son was the only one who received the email. In fairness, I think that only he and my wife had email addresses associated with the booking, but she never received an email about hotel booking.

As I said, in the end, it was a very easy self-service system (actually, I was impressed). However, notifying 1/4 passengers about each of those things (and through different means of communication) doesn’t seem like a very user-friendly way to do that. Thankfully, my wife saw the voucher text, and I had my eye on the email. I could imagine a less-plugged-in family missing one important component or the other.

Our experience with Finnair’s self-service EU261 care

Our experience with the accommodation and meals was very good, apart from the notification snafu noted above.

As noted above, the email that my son received included a personalized link to book the hotel ourselves. Clicking through gave the option to “select your complimentary hotel”.

They were presented with 3 hotel options:

• Comfort Hotel Helsinki Airport (Strawberry Hotels / Choice Privileges property). This was about 1km away. It gets 4.5 out of 5 on Google.
• Hilton Helsinki Airport. This hotel is walkable from arrivals via outdoor covered walkway. It gets 4.4 out of 5 on Google.
• Clarion Helsinki Airport. (Strawberry Hotels / Choice Privileges property). This hotel is walkable from arrivals without having to walk outside. It gets 4.6 out of 5 on Google.

The fact that the Clarion was connected to the airport via an interior walkway won us over. It is also worth noting that reviews mentioned that breakfast starts at 4am, which would mean that if they wanted breakfast before an early flight, they could have it.

During the booking process, it was easy to select the number of hotel rooms they wanted and which passengers to assign to which rooms.

We didn’t really need four rooms, but having three would be convenient since I was also going to be in Helsinki. Remember that the passengers on the affected booking were:

• My wife
• My mother-in-law
• My 2 sons (ages 7 and 5)

The system would allow for selecting up to four hotel rooms. Instead, we chose to put my wife and 5-year-old son in one room, her mother in another room, and my 7 year old in his own room (which I would share rather than leaving him in a room by himself, of course). We did this in part out of curiosity: would the system really allow for booking a hotel for a 7-year-old?

Sure enough, it did. And he had no problem checking in (I was obviously there, but I was surprised that they just needed his passport to assign the room).

The next step was claiming taxi vouchers for transportation to the hotel and back. As I said, the Clarion is connected to the terminal by indoor walkway, so this wasn’t necessary, but I went through the steps out of curiosity. This errored out on the last step (probably because it recognized that it wasn’t necessary). That was fine, as we obviously didn’t need these.

After confirming the hotel, the Finnair system noted that the booking included a voucher for dinner, which it listed as valid from 8pm to 10pm, and a voucher for breakfast (both were automatically part of the booking rather than being actual physical vouchers that needed to be presented).

We arrived at the hotel around 6pm, hoping that dinner might be possible sooner. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The Finnair voucher only included a buffet, and that buffet would only run from 8pm to 11pm. As a result, we dropped our bags at the hotel and went back into arrivals so they could use their boarding pass vouchers.

The 17 EUR vouchers were added to their Helsinki-to-Frankfurt boarding passes (the paper boarding passes for the flight they missed worked for this; the boarding passes from Rovaniemi to Helsinki did not). They worked at a bunch of places in the arrivals hall. Some examples included (note that this is only a partial list):

• Burger King
• A bakery
• A coffee shop
• R kioski (like a convenience store)
• A “gourmet hot dogs” counter
• A sushi counter
• A döner kebab shop
• Alepa, which is a grocery store

That final one was perfect for my family! I was shocked to find a surprisingly near-complete grocery store in the arrivals hall. One of my sons is a very picky eater, so I was thrilled that we could get a range of fruit (strawberries, apples, pears, bananas, grapes, blueberries) and other healthy stuff that my kids like. While the footprint is obviously smaller than most grocery stores, I was nonetheless really impressed with the range of stuff available. That must be so convenient when you return from a trip and need to pick up stuff to make dinner on the way home!

My mother-in-law used her voucher at Burger King. Both at Alepa and Burger King, it was a pretty simple process, and the staff knew what to do. They went a euro or two over the voucher value in both cases (not because the vouchers didn’t cover enough) and they were able to pay the overage with a credit card (the voucher information was clear that they couldn’t be partially used — it was all-or-nothing, so they made sure to get full value). I should also note that the vouchers said they were valid for 72 hours, so they could have used them the next day before the next flight (and there were options in the departures area as well).

A couple of us still went to the buffet at the hotel (I paid 35 Eur for myself for it), mostly out of curiosity to see what it was all about. We were the only people at the buffet (we didn’t even have to provide a room number — the staff member greeting us said, “You must be the ones with the cancelled Finnair flight”). It was a very small buffet, consisting of a modest salad bar and either meat or vegetable lasagna. The lasagna was surprisingly good. My 7yr old and I both went back for a second helping. For drinks, it was just coffee, water, and a couple of types of juice. That was fine.

We ultimately skipped breakfast, so I can’t report on that. However, the hotel was great. I was up late working and only got a couple hours of sleep, but the bed was very comfortable, and the room was far nicer than you’re picturing unless you’ve stayed at a Clarion in Scandinavia before. I can’t imagine that the Hilton would have been nicer.

That stuff was all pretty good. As noted far above, being rebooked on the 4:55pm departure the next day was an issue because we would miss the train to Strasbourg, and we couldn’t modify our Strasbourg hotel booking. To finish up the story, we need to back up.

Getting the flight rebooking fixed

By the time my family arrived at Helsinki airport, I had helped them use the system to book the hotel (we were messaging with them being on in-flight WiFi). However, we wanted to try to get the flight rebooking changed to the morning departure.

As soon as the family arrived, we went to the Finnair service desk (still on the secure side of the terminal). The agent looked at the morning Finnair flight, but there were only 2 available seats (they needed 4). She said that the best they could do was the afternoon flight.

I asked if the agent could rebook them on the Lufthansa flight in the morning. She initially seemed open to that, but then had a conversation in Finnish with another agent and told us that the “rules for rebooking had recently changed” and that they could only be rebooked on a oneworld airline. I pleaded a little bit for help, explaining the situation. She wasn’t going to budge.

Since EU261 provides the opportunity to request a refund if the new flight doesn’t work, I asked her how that would work (this had been booked with Alaska miles originally). She said that she couldn’t speak to the refund process; we would have to reach out via the Finnair customer service system on the website for any questions about compensation. She seemed to feign difficulty understanding me as I pressed on this, and it was clear that she wasn’t going to help. My wife asked about booking to a different destination. The agent said that we could do that, but she probably helped us out, whether or not intentionally: she sort of offhandedly mentioned something (I can’t remember her exact words) that made me realize that being rebooked to a different final destination might affect the eligibility for a compensation claim. I figured that it was better for me to spend 32,000 miles and $80 to put them on Lufthansa via a United award (and just no-show or cancel the new Finnair flight) than to jeopardize the claim since we had a bunch of expenses to consider (the FHR booking in Frankfurt, the train tickets if we missed that train, etc).

We also needed our checked bags back. The same agent told us that they would automatically be transferred to the flight the next calendar day, but since that was ~24 hours away, I told her that we would need the bags. She told us to see the Arrivals Service counter in the baggage claim area, and they could request that the bags be pulled.

The agent at Arrivals Service was very friendly. She advised us that it would probably take quite a while to pull the bags, so we asked if we could go to the hotel and grab a bite to eat and come back. That was no problem. When we returned for the bags, they had unfortunately failed to pull one of them. A different agent saw us looking confused and asked how he could help. He called and tracked down the other bag and advised that it was going to take a while to get it.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t kidding about it taking a long time. He was very apologetic.

While we were waiting, I noticed on Google Flights that it looked like there were now 4 seats available on the early Finnair flight. My wife suggested asking about it at the Arrivals Service desk while we waited for the other bag. I ended up asking the same agent who was trying to get our last bag, and he was eager to be helpful (he seemed to really feel bad about the wait). Unfortunately, Google Flights was incorrect — that flight only had 3 seats available (which I confirmed after clicking through to the Finnair site). However, this Arrivals Service agent followed with, “But Lufthansa has a flight in the morning . . .”

Sure enough, he offered to see if he could get them on that flight. He said, “the amount is close, but I can see if it will take it”. I’m not exactly sure what he meant. Perhaps there is a maximum amount they will pay for a flight on another carrier, and the Lufthansa flight was a bit more? I’m not sure. I do know that he was indeed able to rebook them on the Lufthansa flight, and the new Lufthansa-operated flight then showed up in their Finnair itinerary, and they got a Finnair boarding pass for the Lufthansa-operated flight. That was awesome!

I proceeded to book myself on the same flight with 8,000 United miles and $21 (and I cancelled the award I’d booked on Finnair).

On Monday morning, we took that flight to Frankfurt. We arrived in Frankfurt at about 8:30am. Since I knew that everyone would be tired and we had a lot of bags, I decided that we should use my wife’s Citi Strata Elite Blacklane credit to book a luxury van/chauffer to pick us up at the airport and drive us to the Steigenberger. That was a great decision as it meant only having to get our bags to the door at the airport — the driver was friendly and efficient and the Mercedes van was comfortable. I’ll post about that separately, but we were happy to put this benefit to good use.

I should add that I called the Steigenberger hotel on Sunday night to say that we wouldn’t be arriving on Sunday but that we would be coming in sometime on Monday morning. They said that they wouldn’t have held the rooms if I hadn’t called, but they did hold them thanks to my call. We ultimately got to the hotel with enough time to eat breakfast, and everyone was able to shower and relax a little bit before our train to Strasbourg. We didn’t get to use the $100 credits. While the Clarion in Helsinki was great, I think even my kids were disappointed that we didn’t get to spend the night at the Steigenberger. It was really nice!

TripIt automatically recognized potential eligibility for compensation

One last note of interest: I had our trip information loaded in TripIt (an app/website for organizing travel information that has become really helpful for me). The day after the disruption, TripIt sent me a push notification to let me know that the airline may owe us $465 per passenger for the disrupted flight.

It’s awesome that TripIt is tracking for that. When I clicked through the notification, it had a link to Air Help, a site that helps file EU261 claims. Air Help files claims on behalf of consumers and does the legwork in following up in exchange for a fee of ~35% of the value of the claim (or a bit more if the claim requires court action and you win).

I thought this was an awesome partnership. It totally makes sense that TripIt has the flight info and can track for disruptions. And it totally makes sense for Air Help to market their service in this way. I bet a lot of people have no idea when they are eligible for compensation and would be intimidated by the process of filing for it themselves. I’ll personally file my own claim rather than give Air Help such a big cut of it, but the flip side is that I could certainly imagine the 65% consumer cut will be terrific for many consumers who would otherwise get 0% either because they don’t know about it or don’t know how to go about claiming it. It really seems like a win-win to me.

Bottom line

Our Finnair plans were significantly disrupted a few days ago when a delay led to a missed connection. Thankfully, Finnair did its part under EU261 (despite some comms issues) and provided hotels and meals that were easy to use. Interestingly, although one agent told me that Finnair could only rebook the disrupted passengers on a oneworld airline, a second agent was able to rebook on the next available flight on another airline. That Lufthansa-operated flight was still the next calendar day (resulting in a ~14-hour delay), so I would still expect all EU261 and credit card protections to apply. Thanks to Finnair taking care of most of the expenses, credit card coverage will just handle some prepaid expenses and some small things like the overage on the in-airport food vouchers. I expect that claim should be relatively straightforward, and I expect that an EU261 compensation claim for the ~14hr delay will be as well. I’ll obviously report back on the eventual outcome of that claim, but in the meantime, I wanted to share my experience with the “next steps” after experiencing a qualifying delay with Finnair. I wish we had protections that created similar requirements and self-service tools in the US!

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