Finnair is among the European airlines that has had to face the hardest hurdles to overcome in the past few years. Now with passenger numbers on the rise around the globe, the airline is announcing a major capacity increase to its destinations in Europe and Asia for 2024. Here’s what the Finnair news is alla about.
Why Has Finnair Been Hit Harder Than Other Airlines?
The Finnish flag carrier’s pre covid business model heavily relied on connecting cities across Europe to destinations in the far east. With covid as all airlines flights were forced to stop, however this dependance on the far east became an obstacle to post covid recovery as many Asian countries opened their borders much later than the rest of the world.
The double whammy arrived when, as things seemed to be going back to normal, Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. The closing of Russian airspace completely destroyed the airline’s previous business model. Management was forced to completely rebuild the airline’s schedule and network. Finally the airline seems to be finding a new balance in this new world post covid with the Russian airspace still closed to EU airlines.
Which Finnair Flights Will Have Extra Capacity?
The airline will be focusing its energy in increasing capacity from March 31st 2024 in these regions:
- Scandinavia
- Germany
- Poland
- UK
- Japan
In Scandinavia there will be extra services to Tronheim, Tromsø, Bergen (via Stockholm) and Stockholm itself in Norway. Also extra flights from Helsinki to Billund will be added.
Germany Finnair will serve more daily flights to Dusseldorf and Hamburg in Germany, as well as Manchester, Edinburgh and Dublin in Ireland and the UK.
Finnair will also enhance its services to Tokyo Narita per extra weekly flights in 2024. Finally there is Poland. Here the airline will both increase capacity and launch a new service.
As for the capacity increase, Finnair plans to have more flights to Krakow and reinstate the suspended flight to Gdansk. The new flight on the other hand will be to the southern city of Wroclaw. More details of this new service will be available in the coming months.
