- Service commenced in 2014
- Was raised to 9w for summer 2016
- Promoting onward connections to Asia
- Stopovers in Helsinki new for this summer
Finnair will fly 9w between Dublin and Helsinki as of 27 March, up 3w from the winter schedule.
The route will be operated by a mix of Airbus A319 and Embraer E190 aircraft during the 2017 summer season with a schedule to connect onto Finnair’s 12 destinations in Asia and the Far East, including Bangkok, Hong Kong, Nagoya, Seoul and seasonal services to Krabi and Xian.
The route launched for summer 2015 and was expanded to 9w for summer 2016.
In April, Finnair began to offer stopovers in Finland for its passengers travelling between Asia and Europe. The stopover flights can be booked on the new stopover.finnair.com website, which also includes information on various stopover activities and destination information on Finland. StopOver Finland is a project led by Visit Finland, and the travel packages are implemented by an external travel agency partner. The duration of the stopover travel packages ranges from five hours to five days.
Finnair expects its capacity (ASK) to grow annually by 8–10% on average during the strategy period extending to 2018. Furthermore, it now expects to double its Asian traffic from the 2010 level already in 2018, while the original target was set at 2020.
Finnair say Edinburgh will be up to 5w operated by a 138-seat Airbus A319 aircraft and Finnair Airbus A350XWB aircraft will operate a fifth daily service between Heathrow and Helsinki.
New short haul routes frrom Helinki for summer 2017 schedule. Between April 11 and October 28, Finnair will fly four weekly flights to Reykjavik, Iceland; weekly to Corfu, Greece; and Menorca, Spain on Sundays. Between June 17 and August 12, Finnair will also operate a new weekly flight to Ibiza, Spain on Saturdays.
Finnair has a fleet of 73 including two for Nordic Regional Airlines and flies to 108 destinations. It carried 10.2m passengers in 2015, slightly more than Aer Lingus, making it Europe’s 17th largest airline and has a staff roll 4,817. It recently reported a 7th successive quarter of profit improvement for its 2016 Q2 (Apr-Jun). Revenue increased by 5pc to €570m and operating profit (before exceptional items) by €16m to +€3m.
Andrew Fish, Finnair Sales Director Ireland, Benelux & Britain, said: “our summer 2017 schedule allows passengers even greater flexibility to take advantage of our award winning service and excellent connections to Asia.”
Norwegian also fly 2w to Helsinki.
