Finnair (AY, Helsinki Vantaa) is considering revising its Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac) order book given surging demand for travel from the carrier's Asian markets.
According to Finland's public broadcaster, YLE, Finnair's partnership with Chinese online travel portal and Alibaba Group subsidiary, Alitrip, has proven so successful that demand has outstripped anticipated figures.
The two had only expected 3,000 Chinese tourists to head to Finland to observe the Aurora Borealis phenomenon during this year's winter season. However, to date, the package tours have attracted more than 4,000 tourists with even more expected next year.
As such, given strong Asian market demand, the carrier is now considering converting an undisclosed number of the twelve remaining A350-900s it has on order from Airbus, to larger A350-1000s. In addition, two A330-300s that were supposed to be retired this year will be retained given the ongoing shortage of trained-up A350 flight crews. As reported by ch-aviation at several points over the past year, the Finnish airline has had to wet-lease in additional capacity to offset the absence of A330 crews who are currently undergoing A350-900 type-rating.
Finnair currently serves Beijing Capital, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Shanghai Pudong, and Xi'an Xianyang in China. In terms of weekly international capacity, the Chinese market ranks almost on par with Japan (3,981 seats) as the carrier's largest longhaul market.
