I just subjected Finnair to the Ultimate Airline Service Stress Test: GVA-HEL-HKG-SYD-BKK-HEL-GVA, travelling in business class over the Christmas holiday period with my 3-year-old daughter, my 1-year-old son, my 79-year-old mother-in-law and my six-months-pregnant wife. (Note: the whole trip was on a Finnair ticket on Finnair flights, but HKG-SYD and SYD-BKK were codeshares operated by Cathay Pacific and BA respectively.) These are the results:
The good: Cabin crew and in-flight service - ranged from very good to truly outstanding. Marvellous crew on HEL-HKG, great with the kids, anticipated every need, friendly, efficient, helpful, but discreet and low key. Best CC I've flown with, ever. Good food, seats not the best but perfectly adequate, plenty of space. Very pleasant atmosphere on board.
The so-so: Late leaving Helsinki ("late arrival of incoming aircraft", plus further farting about for no apparent reason once we were on board), so just missed connection in HKG. Although there were at least 40 other pax transferring to the CX flight to SYD, they didn't hold it (I guess CX don't care if Finnair have to rebook a bunch of pax). There was a great deal of farting about, 40 grumpy pax, one harried Finnair rep, all onward flights full to overflowing, no seats anywhere. Took 4 hours to sort out, but in the end, we were well looked after: nice hotel, meal vouchers, and seats on a Qantas flight to SYD 24 hours later.
The bad: On the return, we were booked on a BA-operated flight from SYD to BKK on a Saturday, scheduled departure 17:30. I checked on the internet that morning and saw it was delayed - to 6.05am the following morning! I then spent the next 3 hours trying without success to contact someone from Finnair or BA to find out what the delay would mean for our onward connections from BKK. BA office in Aust closed on weekends. No local Finnair office. Finnair service centre in Helsinki, supposedly open 24-hours (and which charges 3 Euro or something per call), unreachable - wouldn't even ring, sometimes got a message "your call cannot be completed". Finnair website shows no change to our itinerary. Finnair has my mobile phone no. and email, but never contacted me.
In desperation I called Qantas. A sympathetic fellow confirmed the BA delay, said he was unfortunately unable to change my booking, but advised me to go to the airport in person and hunt down a BA rep. This I did, eventually finding the BA office in an obscure corner of the terminal, where a nice lady managed to book us onto a Thai Airways flight to BKK leaving at 16:30. It was a scramble to get home, pack up the family, get back to the airport and on to the flight, but it all ended happily. But really, it could have been so much more easily handled with a phone call.
In conclusion, the rating for Finnair:
In flight - very good.
Ground service/reservations - needs some serious attention.