Finnair senior vice-president Allister Paterson said the airline plans to continue building on its geographic advantage to double its 2010 revenue from traffic via its Helsinki hub between Europe and Asia, by the year 2020.
Paterson was hosting a press conference at Helsinki airport. "Finnair a few years ago found its niche, and it's a geographic niche," he said. "We are best situated to serve traffic on a connection basis between the growing Europe and Asian markets."
He said the airline currently connects 11 Asian destinations to "40 to 50 cities" in Finland and Europe via Helsinki, plus the addition of Xian (Finnair's fifth Chinese destination) and Hanoi routes launching in June.
"Finland's geographic location allows wide-body-aircraft to do round-trips to most Asian destinations in 24 hours. This means daily routes can be served with one aircraft – that's a very high aircraft utilisation."
Finnair chief operating officer Ville Iho added that this level of utilisation meant the airlines A340s were averaging a world-record 17 hours flying a day.
Iho said other strategies helping cost effectiveness included moving towards an all-Airbus fleet, which meant mixed-fleet flying by air crews qualified on multiple aircraft types within the same "family".
Airbus marketing boss Alan Pardoe claimed the A350 900s – of which Finnair has 11 on order – were around 10 per cent more fuel-efficient than Boeing's 787 Dreamliners.
In an interview with BBT, Paterson said Finnair was "looking at a lot of different opportunities" following the recent announcement of its joint venture with British Airways and American Airlines on transatlantic routes.
He described joint ventures as "a step on the commercial continuum" between bilateral agreements and full mergers and acquisitions. "A JV allows you to better coordinate fares. You get some limited ability from the governments to actually align fare products," added Paterson.
"We're potentially looking at everything to see how the world will shift – I'd say we are an opportunity scanner. I think there could ultimately be more JVs or consolidation, that's what the industry's doing.
“And you don't want to be left out of that game. Because of nationalism, and those ownership issues, JVs are a bit of a proxy for consolidation. We're not averse to it at all, because we want to be a survivor and a thriver in the game."
He added that the biggest challenge for carriers over the next 10 years was survival, which is why Finnair is exploiting its geographic niche, shaving around two hours off flight times compared to competing connecting services from Europe to Asia.
Kati Ihamaki, Finnair's vice-president of sustainability development, said that 95 per cent of corporate customers ask about sustainability in their tenders.
She said measures taken by the airline included 67 per cent of all cabin waste recycled on inbound flights, further trials of jet fuel made with recycled cooking oil this summer, and the company’s weight-watcher programme – where every component is scrutinised for weight efficiency, including replacing aluminium luggage containers with kevlar ones, saving around 2.5 million tons of CO2 emissions annually.
Ihamaki added that continuing delays in implementing 'Single European Sky' – unified, EU-managed airspace and traffic management – was costing the environment 16 million tons of CO2 emissions a year. "We've now been waiting 20 years for this," she said.
finnair.com