The carrier will offer 51 European and Asian destinations for winter 2020/21 and will increase the number of destinations on offer for summer 2021. From October 25, 2020 through March 31, 2021, Finnair will serve 45 domestic and European destinations.
On Tuesday (October 6, 2020), Finnair announced that they have trimmed their winter schedule due to weak demand but will increase frequencies during Spring 2021. For their winter 2020/21 schedule, which runs from October 25, 2020 through March 31, 2021, the carrier will serve 51 destinations including 45 domestic and European gateways. Finnair’s long-haul offer will focus on the Asia Pacific region with flights to Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nanjing and Bangkok. The Bangkok route only carries passengers inbound to Helsinki. The airline will also continue to operate cargo-only flights to Singapore and New York.
For Summer 2021, Finnair plans on launching a new route between Busan and South Korea as well as services to Tokyo-Haneda. Finnair’s routes to San Francisco, Xi’an, Beijing-Daxing and Sapporo will remain suspended. In Tuesday’s announcement, Finnair’s Chief Commercial Officer, Ole Orvér, said,
“The pandemic situation and the related travel restrictions continue to have a heavy impact on demand for air travel, and thus it is not feasible to operate all the flights we in May planned for this winter. Our network will expand, and we will increase weekly frequencies during the spring. We continue to follow the demand outlook and will be updating the summer 2021 traffic program accordingly in early 2021. We of course hope that travel restrictions and the pandemic situation will alleviate by then, so that we can increase our flight offering.”
Finnair will temporarily close their Schengen lounge at Helsinki Airport due to lower customer numbers. The carrier’s non-Schengen lounges have been closed since March 2020. During the period from November 2020 to March 2021, Finnair will operate around 75 daily flights. By comparison, in 2019 Finnair operated around 350 flights per day to over 100 destinations in Europe, Asia and North America. With continued uncertainty and changing travel restrictions, Finnair will continue to offer booking flexibility for flights through March 31, 2021. Guests impacted by flight cancellations will be contacted directly and offered either an alternative flight or a full ticket refund.
Specializing in passenger and cargo traffic between Asia and Europe, Finnair has a competitive advantage due to their geographical location. Finnair is also the only Nordic network with a 4-Star Skytrax rating and carried over 14.7 million passengers in 2019, earning revenues of €3.1 billion. The carrier is also a member of the global oneworld® alliance and its shares are traded on the Nasdaq Helsinki stock exchange.
Source: Finnair