Finnair "really hurting" from decline
Business travellers have been disappearing off Finnair planes since the economic downturn began, its ceo Jukka Heinonen said.
He said numbers had dropped about 30% in the past year and it was "really hurting" the airline.
Mr Heinonen said that his carrier was more dependant than many others on business travel but major companies in Finland were being hit more than those in others countries.
"We have seen seven of our top 10 corporate customers cut travel by 50%," he said.
"But I think that every airline is suffering. No is isolated. We are having a hard time filling our planes with business travellers just disappearing.
"We have had the customers but they are paying less than we would like."
Mr Heinonen said that no one currently in the aviation industry had experienced anything quite like the current recession.
He said Finnair was trying to cope by cutting capacity by 10% and by keeping its rates up where possible.
The airline has also made substantial cuts and is laying off workers.
But one area where Finnair continued to do well was in its services to the Far East.
While the route to Mumbai had been cut, services to others, including Tokyo had been increased.
The airline was also running daily services to Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai as well as services to three other Japanese destinations.
"We are well represented and the Far East has become one of our key markets. It is now more than 50% of our business market," he said.
"The timetable is designed for the business travellers with good connections. A business traveller can leave Manchester at 12 noon and be in the Far East the next morning."
But he said that while Finnair wished to come through the recession as an independent airline, it had not ruled out a merger.
"You can never exclude such a thing. The best way for us is to grow organically through our service and product but we don't exclude a merger although we are looking for organic growth."
Mr Heinonen said that while he could not see the end of the recession, he said the decline in bookings for summer not been as sharp as in the months before.
"There is a slowdown in the decline . It is not quite as fast but we still have to be careful.
"We don't look further than the next four months not to the winter. Maybe the decline is slower but it is too early to make any predictions," he said.
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