Finnair (AY, Helsinki Vantaa) will not be deviating from its Asia-accented strategy, but until key markets like Japan, South Korea, and China open up it will be adding new destinations in the United States to its network, its chief executive Topi Manner has said.
The Finnish flag carrier has continued to suffer from the repercussions of a heavy pre-pandemic focus on providing connections to Asia via its Helsinki Vantaa hub, but it anticipates the global business environment returning to something approaching normality within the coming year, he told Reuters news agency on February 11.
“We are optimistic about summer,” he said, because the peak season for leisure travel in the northern hemisphere is when he expects Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries to lift their tight travel restrictions.
“We believe Asia will open up eventually. In the meantime, we are partially pivoting to North America,” Manner said, adding that Finnair’s new destinations for summer 2022 will include Dallas/Fort Worth and Seattle Tacoma International.
Finnair already flies from Helsinki to New York JFK (7x weekly), Chicago O'Hare (5x weekly), Los Angeles International (3x weekly), and Miami International (3x weekly) and from Stockholm Arlanda to New York JFK (4x weekly), Los Angeles (3x weekly), and Miami Int'l (3x weekly), the ch-aviation schedules module shows. It does not currently fly to Canada or Mexico.
The airline recently unveiled a EUR200 million euro (USD267 million) investment in a cabin renewal for its A330 and A350 long-haul aircraft, to be fitted over the next two years but with some of the refurbed aircraft being rolled out from spring 2022.
According to the ch-aviation fleets module, Finnair currently operates eight A330-300s and seventeen A350-900s (with two more to be delivered) among a total fleet of 83 aircraft.
The carrier has yet to embark on replacing some of its older narrowbody aircraft, and Manner said this was unlikely for another three or four years. The age of its thirty-five A320 Family jets (six A319-100s, ten A320-200s, and nineteen A321-200s) varies between 3.58 years for its youngest A321 and 21.51 years for its oldest A319.
On February 11, the European Commission said it had found a fourth Finnish bailout of EUR48.62 million (USD55.18 million) to support Finnair between January 1 and July 31, 2021, in the form of a loan, to be in line with the bloc’s revised Covid-era state aid rules. It followed other support measures Brussels approved in May 2020, June 2020, and March 2021.
As a result of the pandemic and travel restrictions Finland and other countries imposed to limit the spread of the virus, “Finnair incurred significant operating losses and experienced a steep decline in traffic and profitability over this period,” the commission said in a statement, adding that it found the measure to be proportionate and not leading to overcompensation.
