My Finnair Experience

Given Tom’s prompt in another thread I thought I’d let you know how about my Finnair experience of last week. The next few lines are really a bit of ramble and discussion rather than a trip report so I thought I’d place this in the main forum. (Mods feel free to move if necessary…..)

The history of this flight is chaotic. I’ve mentioned this before but its worth mentioning again as it really shows the level of confusion the passengers had.

My original flight was booked through Expedia with Excel Airways. Expedia don’t deal direct with charter airlines, so sub-contract their sales to Freedom flights. You may recall that Excel couldn’t source a 738 to do the NCL runs this year and so sub’d out to Air Scandic. As Air Scandic don’t have their own aircraft, they used a Finnair 757 for the summer. When Air Scandic went bust last month, the flights were taken over by Air Atlanta Europe but still using the based Finnair 757 with flight codes changing from SCY to EUK. So, my flight to Larnaca was on a Finnair 757, but scheduled with Air Atlanta Europe.

You can imagine how people were confused. Even more so as Air Scandic went under after the tickets were printed showing the Air Scandic flight number. On the return flight, when we queued at check-in, the staff questioned whether our tickets were valid because this wasn’t an Air Scandic flight! Chaos I’m afraid.

One question I have from the flight is who did the cabin crew work for? They were all ladies with Newcastle accents but did they work for Finnair, Excel, Air Atlanta? I don’t know. The cockpit crew were obviously Finnair.

Both flights themselves were pretty routine. Flew both ways on OH-LBV, a 757 built in 2002, so pretty new. The meals came out on Air Scandic trays; the in-flight magazine was from Air Scandic – I found both of these little points unexpected.

In flight entertainment was non-existent, though I don’t know why. The drop down LCDs were there showing a route map for nearly 5 hours but nothing more unfortunately. Who is responsible for providing the entertainment? Is it Finnair, or Air Atlanta? 5 hours is a long time without it and was a bit if a disappointment.

All in all, whilst the flight was routine, the organisation and confusion surrounding it was not.

If anyone can answer any of the questions I’ve posed above, that would be helpful….