Finland isn’t known for chaos. It’s known for things working. Quietly, efficiently, and without the need for a five-paragraph apology. Tax systems are trusted. Public services don’t require a second thought. And Finnair? It was supposed to be the flying version of all that.

Finnair was just ranked Europe’s worst airline by Flightright, an outcome that surprised many and frustrated more. Not low-cost worst. Not compared to Ryanair worst. Just worst, period.

Finnair and Ryanair were never meant to appear side by side in the same ranking. One sells seats. The other sells a national identity. When they land on the same chart for the same reasons – delays, poor communication, disappointed customers – something deeper is happening.

Ryanair sets expectations low and delivers what it promises. Finnair, on the other hand, has long stood for something higher. Calm skies. Clean design. Finnish precision. That’s why this ranking feels heavier.

When the data says you’re worse than Ryanair or Wizz Air, it’s not just bad optics. It’s a brand crisis. And for a national airline, a brand crisis is a cultural one too.

A Timeline of signals ignored

The timeline is clear

• Before 2022, Finnair builds its identity as a sleek, premium gateway between Europe and Asia
• From 2022 onward, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine closes airspace. Flight routes get longer and costlier. Finnair loses its edge
• In 2023 and 2024, budget cuts, layoffs, and restructuring make headlines
• In spring 2025, workers strike. Flights fall apart. Customers get stranded and ignored

By mid-2025, Flightright releases its ranking. Finnair lands in last place.

The ranking that hit harder than expected

The ranking came from Flightright, a flight compensation service. They analyzed reliability, compensation behavior, and customer satisfaction across twenty major European airlines. Finnair came very last with a score of 2.48 out of 5. That’s not just bad. That’s collapse-level.

What does premium mean when reliability falls apart

And who’s really accountable

Management, unions, government policy, or a system that punishes customer loyalty every time there’s internal conflict.

It takes two to lose public trust

A crisis like this doesn’t come from one side alone. While management is responsible for leading the business (and a brand), unions also shape how that leadership is challenged and how disruption is handled in public. In spring 2025, both sides had valid concerns. But the lack of shared messaging left passengers caught between silence and standstill.

This isn’t about blaming either party. It’s about recognizing that when communication breaks down internally, it shows externally. And when trust is lost, the public rarely separates cause from consequence. They just remember who left them waiting.

Every country has its own Finnair

An institution so rooted in the national identity that people stop seeing it as a business. It’s just there. Trusted automatically. Expected to work. Until one day, it doesn’t

• In Finland, it’s Finnair. Once a symbol of smooth, reliable Nordic travel. Now associated with delays, poor service, and being ranked the worst airline in Europe
• In the UK, it’s the BBC. Once trusted by everyone. Now caught in political arguments and losing younger viewers
• In Germany, it’s Deutsche Bahn. Once famous for being on time. Now mostly a punchline about delays
• In France, it’s the public school system. Meant to create equal chances, now struggling with inequality and stress
• In the US, it’s the New York Times. Once the most trusted name in news. Now either loved or completely dismissed, depending on who you ask

I studied media management. Which means I’ve spent time understanding what makes people trust an institution and what happens when that trust breaks.

What I’ve learned is this. Brands aren’t just what companies say. They’re what people expect. And when those expectations go unmet, over time, in silence, or through poor crisis handling, it doesn’t just damage a brand. It shakes belief in the entire system behind it

That’s what’s happening here.

Legacy institutions overestimate loyalty, underestimate frustration, and stay quiet when they should speak.

This wasn’t just a service failure. It was a narrative failure. Finnair, like many legacy brands, didn’t just carry passengers. It carried meaning. That’s what makes the silence harder to accept.

Remember Nokia?

This isn’t the first time Finland has watched a national symbol fall apart in public.

For a while, Nokia wasn’t just a phone company. It was Finland’s way of proving it could lead the world. Design, innovation, engineering, trust. Nokia wasn’t about trends. It was about control. Quiet superiority. Systems that worked.

And then suddenly, they didn’t.

The world moved faster than Nokia did. The product stayed good, but the story stopped landing. Decisions were slow. Messaging stayed vague. The trust disappeared before the leadership caught up. And just like that, Finland lost not just a company, it lost its global spotlight. Its proof of relevance.

Which is why Finnair’s public fall feels so familiar. Not because it’s the same industry, but because it touches the same nerve. A high-functioning, widely trusted Finnish brand slipping at a moment when it needs to stand taller than ever. The product might survive. The brand might too. But the narrative is already in free fall and if you’ve studied what happened with Nokia, you know how hard that is to win back.

How to recover: Start by listening

Finnair’s recovery won’t come from a campaign. It will come from a shift in tone.

When trust is broken, especially by an institution people grew up believing in, what matters most isn’t perfection. It’s presence. People don’t expect everything to go right. They expect someone to show up when it doesn’t.

So what does showing up look like now?

Start with acknowledgement.

Say what happened. Not in a rehearsed statement or corporate apology tone, but in words that sound like they came from a human who understands what this moment meant to customers, staff, and the public.

Then listen.

To the passengers who were stranded. To the staff who were caught in the middle. To the quiet voices that rarely make it into boardrooms or press releases. Real recovery doesn’t start with answers. It starts with willingness to hear what went wrong.

Repair the inside first.

A divided company cannot offer a unified experience. If management and unions are locked in standoff mode, that tension will leak into every interaction. Customers don’t need to understand the internal politics—they just need to feel that someone is leading.

Redefine what trust means now.

For Finnair, trust was once about silence, calm, control. Today, trust looks different. It looks like responsiveness. Transparency. Human connection when plans fail. That’s the new premium.

This isn’t about fixing a ranking. It’s about repairing a relationship.

And like any relationship, it begins with asking:

What do we need to do to earn your trust again?

Final though

That’s not a travel issue. It’s a media and trust management issue. And once you see it, it’s hard to unsee

I still believe in what Finnair stands for, and can stand for again.

This post isn’t about blaming brands. It’s about recognizing how quickly even the strongest brands can lose control of their story.

As someone who’s studied media and branding, I see this not as the end of anything, but as a turning point.

The question isn’t whether Finnair can recover. It’s whether it can reclaim the clarity, trust, and leadership that once made it a symbol of everything Finland does best.