Instructions for involuntary reissue and refund
Unless there are specific instructions on Easy Hotspot, travel agencies can handle booking based on general disruption policy. In any other situations Finnair Agent Help Desk must be contacted.
Regardless of how many days before departure involuntary change takes place, all involuntary changes follow the guidelines below.
Finnair NDC API supports involuntary reissue and refund, therefore all our partners connected directly to Finnair API can support the feature. In case your selected connection doesn’t support the feature, the options below can be used.
Changes
For customer-initiated free of charge changes, self re-accommodation can be done:
- by using Finnair Manage Booking page
- by contacting our Agent Help Desk using dedicated NDC Chat line at the bottom right corner of this page, or via phone, find contacts here.
Cancellation
In case the passenger doesn´t accept the flight change and wishes to cancel, please use one of below options:
- Cancel the booking using Finnair Manage Booking page
- Contact our Agent Help Desk to cancel the booking by using dedicated NDC Chat line at the bottom right corner of this page, or via phone, find contacts here.
Refund
After cancellation of the booking,
- BSP Travel Agents should request a refund via BSPlink.
- US market ARC Travel Agent should request for a refund using refund form on Finnair website. On the refund form, use option for direct customer, and include as additional information: “ARC agent”. The refund payment will be settled through ARC-IAR reporting (with agency credit memo when form of payment is cash).
You can check Finnair policy for involuntary refunds in different scenarios on disruption policy page. Case-specific exceptional policy may also be published on Operational news.
Note! Refunds cannot be processed via Agent Help Desk or Finnair Manage Booking
Involuntary changes are divided in to two categories described below. Depending on the occasion of an involuntary change, a correct approach must be followed.
Disruption
- A disruption is an involuntary change to a Finnair flight 2 days or less before the first scheduled departure date on the ticket.
- In disruption cases endorsement text must read “INVOL REROUTE”.
- I-indicator in front of fare calculation must be used in case of disruption.
Commercial schedule change or cancellation
- A schedule change is an involuntary change to a Finnair flight more than 2 days prior to flight departure.
- In planned schedule change / cancellation, endorsement text must read “SKCHG”.
- S-indicator in front of the fare calculation must be used in case of a planned sched change.
Involuntary reissue on 105 document
Please see below which elements need to be taken into consideration when building an involuntary reissue TST and added to PNR.
| TST | The original fare from the exchangeable ticket must be in reissue mode on new TST. |
| TST | The original taxes from the exchangeable ticket must be in old mode on new TST. |
| TST | No additional collection, ‘Total’ and/or ‘Grand Total’ is 0. |
| TST | The original endorsement from the exchangeable ticket copied to new TST must have one of the following additional text at the end: “INVOL REROUTE” or “SKCHG” (please see further above for more info). |
| OS element | Depending on case, one of below must be added (please see further above for more info which one to use) OS AY INVOL CHANGE DUE TO DISRUPTION OS AY INVOL CHANGE DUE TO SKCHG |
| Waiver code | Separate waiver code from Finnair is not needed. |
Please be alert that you are reissuing/exchanging the correct coupons from the ticket. For unused tickets, do involuntary reissue for the whole ticket, even though there are changes only on outbound or homebound.
Even though all flights on the ticket are not changed, you need to include all flights, since it is within the same fare component of the whole homebound travel.
Refund
You can check Finnair policy for involuntary refunds in different scenarios on disruption policy page. Case-specific exceptional policy may also be published on Operational news. In other cases, travel agencies need an authorization from Finnair’s Agent Help Desk.
All flights not to be used must be cancelled from the PNR.
The simplest way to get refund for unused ticket/coupon is to process the refund directly via your own GDS system. Note! Just coupon status change to R-refunded is not reflecting monetary refund through BSP settlement. All refunds through GDS are audited, in case of discrepancy in refund amount, Debit Memo (ADM) is raised for Travel Agent through BSP or ARC.
BSP agents: If GDS refund is not possible, Travel Agent is to apply for refund via BSP link. Remember to indicate in the free text field that the reason for refund is due to an involuntary change. For EMD-coupon associated to flight coupon, please apply for refund via BSPlink Refund Application (RA).
ARC agents: If GDS refund is not possible, Travel Agent is to apply for refund via Refund Web-form on Finnair internet site. Please mention in additional information box: ARC Agent. For EMD-coupon associated to flight coupon, please apply for refund via Refund Web-form.
Ticketing and informing the customer
Please always double-check both the original ticket and the reissued ticket that you can see that the correct coupons are in E(Exchange) status and O(Open) status, or alternatively A(Airport control) status.
Send a copy of the reissued ticket to the customer. Also check if there are any possible special services (SSR) booked to the original flights that need to be rebooked to the new flights.
At the time the customer has agreed and approved the new flights/schedule, it is recommended to insert information of this in the PNR. For example SR OTHS PAX ACCEPTED SCHED CHG FOR AY006 or similar that suits the occasion.