A crazy erorr do, in Hong Kong business class for 1€

I was in Japan, a trip I had bought thanks to Alitalia miles, when I get a notification on my cell phone from one of the many sites specializing in error making that I follow.

The route leaves from Bologna to China to Guanzou, the crazy price: 1€ plus taxes. I don't think twice, partly because with an error fare there is no time to think twice, and I buy two tickets for a total of 970€.

For the April 25, 2020 bridge, I was going to take a trip to southwestern China, even popping over to Hong Kong and Macau. What I obviously did not know at the time was that China was already in advanced incubation of the virus that a few months later we would come to know as Covid-19.

The error was not long-lived, but with incredible surprise as the offer on Guanzou disappeared the promo to fly always from Bologna to Hong Kong appeared in the same conditions.

What disrupted the plans was not the airline's failure to honor the tickets, but the coronavirus: all cancelled flights and the hopes of being able to change the ticket were equal to Leicester's hopes of winning the Premier League.

Instead, the miracle happened, and on a cold April day, locked in my house like the rest of Italy, I contacted the Finnish airline's call center, ready to hear, "We're sorry, you had had a lucky break, but the moon has turned, we'll send you a voucher..." . On the contrary, the response was, "Of course you can change the dates and also the route, as we will no longer fly from Helsinki to Bologna's Guglielmo Marconi for this year."

And so I move my two tickets to the end of November, the deadline the company imposes, and also lengthen the stay by a few days.

Arriving in early June, I decide to take a trip to the airline's website to see if everything was still in order. I go to read the post-lockdown recovery updates and to my amazement read that all flights to China, excluding the route to Shanghai had been canceled by Finnair until May 2021.

I am once again ready to contact the CC and be told, "Excuse me but you paid 1€ for the ticket, what do you expect...?" But instead the stars and especially a wonderful call center assistant with whom I chat on the Finnnair website in Italian, tells me, "Wait I'll see what I can do....." A few minutes later she offers me to change the destination from Guanzohu to Hong Kong. It seems like a dream, since in Italy you can't via phone sometimes talk to big companies, here everything was solved via chat. 

The kind customer care person then changes the destination and dates, but the icing on the cake is missing. As I am about to say thank you and goodbye, I realize by checking the website that I had no choice of seats, or rather it was payment, and for the 4 flights it was over 750€! I point this out to the assistance, ready to hear, "More claims?" but instead I am surprised again : "You are right, but since the rules have changed now and you bought and paid earlier, I will call Helsinki and get the pre-assignment of seats authorized." 

Months pass and Hong Kong has no intention of opening its borders, or rather it has just done so only with Singapore, I try to call Finnair to move my flight for the umpteenth time. This time, however, comes the cold shower: "Sorry you can no longer move the flight for free, you have to pay the fare difference. That increases from €1 to €1,890."

I'm resigned to losing the €970 spent, because I'm certainly not going to pay €4,000 to reschedule the trip, when the new sign of doom appears via email. "Your flight to Helsinki has been cancelled."

 

 

 

 

Thanks to this itinerary change, I am again given the opportunity to choose a new date at no additional cost, and my decision falls on May 2021. It is now necessary to just wait for spring to come and hope that the world is still healthy and has not fallen back into a third lockdown, then I will be able to fly on the brand new A350/900 business class, the backbone of the Finnish airline's long-haul fleet.

• error do
• One World