Domestic routes see 28% cut
Finnair has today (June 9) reported drastic cuts in capacity across much of its network in an attempt to maintain load factors.
A 13.9% drop in domestic scheduled traffic last month prompted Finnair to slash capacity by 27.7%, resulting in a 9.5% rise in load factor, or percentage of seats filled.
Overall, Finnair cut capacity by 16.3% in May, resulting in a 4.2% growth in load factor to 69.1%. Passenger volume fell 11.3% to 571,374.
"We have succeeded in adjusting capacity better than last year," said Christer Haglund, Finnair's senior vp communications.
"There is still space on aircraft, however, and flight ticket prices are low. Unit revenue for scheduled passenger traffic has continued to fall steeply throughout the early part of the year."
Finnair has suffered financial losses as a result of falling demand, particularly for business travel, brought on by the global recession.
Last week Finnair announced further cost cutting measures amounting to €100m, most of which is to come from savings on staff costs (see ABTN news June 5). The new measures are in addition to an earlier €100m plan announced in March, which will result in around 6,000 temporary, unpaid lay-offs.
In April, Finnair predicted it would suffer a full-year loss after witnessing a 10% decline in turnover to €515.7m in the first quarter of the year.
www.finnair.com