Finnair gets us through

As someone who believes in complaining loudly, I also like to balance that with praise where praise is due.

I have in the past complained about the service of Finnair to match the climate of Finland (cold and damp or bloody freezing) and while gratefully sitting in Hong Kong at the moment I would like to take a moment to thank Finnair for their job well done in routing us home via another method.

The staff worked hard in the face of adverse customer attitudes. My experience on the counter with one woman who had been working flat tack for 2 hours was efficient un-rattled and professional. Sadly not all of those waiting to be dealt with can be described as such (though most were patient and tolerant).

As you may know there was a volcanic eruption in Iceland yesterday, and this has tossed tons of ash into the air.

Importantly for us at this time into the Air Space too.

We heard on the news of the eruption I checked that flights were running on the net before heading off to the airport.
However by the time we got to Helsinki (3 hours before our flight out to Heathrow) it seemed that flights were being canceled over the northern Air Space.

We joined a (swiftly growing) bunch down in the basement of Helsinki Airport (nice cold floors too down there folks) to sort out our canceled flight.

After a long wait (and order brought to the masses via a well functioning ticketing system), the staff we spoke with identified a flight leaving for HK right about then and shunted us swiftly to that.

A quick sprint across the airport to the departure gate and we essentially got our baggage checked directly in and we walked right on to the plane (which seemed to be being held for us).

Now sitting in HK (with no delay to our travel) we are reading that all flights out of HEL are on hold till Saturday and the situation is spreading across Nth Europe.

The staff's great responce, efficient processing and fine exception handling got us on our way

thanks Finnair