Finnair is maintaining that the current seismic shocks rocking the airline world should not lead to national subsidies distorting the market.
Speaking in Seoul today (4 June) as the carrier launched services to the South Korean capital, Finnair senior vice president public affairs and corporate communications Christer Haglund said that market forces must prevail in the current global uncertainty.
”We have seen a lot of airlines going bust and record-high oil prices but in a way this is good,” he said. ”Gasoline has been too cheap if you look at it historically and this will lead to many more bankruptcies in Europe.
”We hope it will be fair play as we don't [want to] see any European subsidies. If market forces are allowed to continue then the aviation sector will survive.”
Haglund also underlined the enduring business rationale for the decision to start its Helsinki-Seoul route - its 11th foray into Asia.
With the exception of Frankfurt, Paris and London Heathrow, Asia has remarkably few direct flights from Europe, prompting Finnair to trumpet its geographical location as providing the fastest door-to-door routing.
With a Minimum Connecting Time of just 35mins at Finnair's Helsinki hub coupled with an extensive feeder network, Haglund claims an average time saving of around five hours per flight.
And it is not one way traffic either. Clearly given Finland”s relatively small population of 5.2m, Asian traffic to the northern European country and on to Europe is key - particularly using its popular business class product.
Finnair is building on its business appeal to Asia. Premium class is often sold out for example - but it is none-the-less facing the challenges of maintaining yield against capacity increase with diminishing load factor.
Despite that environment the introduction of Korean flights has attracted considerable interest in the Finnish-Korean community as Helsinki's ambassador to Korea, Kim Luotonen made clear at a reception this afternoon. That interest however was also set against a background of thousands of riot police deployed in the capital to monitor anti-US beef import proposals.
”Finnair have the first direct flight to northern Europe and I hope that it will improve understanding,” he said. ”There are many riot police in town but one feature of the demonstrations is that they are peaceful and not violent.”