Finnair says it will operate a much
restricted schedule over the winter in response to “a
temporary softening of demand in the market due to widespread travel
restrictions”. From November 2020 to March 2021, the airline will operate around
75 flights per day, compared with 350 at the same time last year.
The flights will serve 45 domestic and European
destinations with reduced weekly frequencies on almost all routes. Finnair’s
long-haul flights will focus on Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nanjing and
Bangkok. On the Bangkok route, Finnair will only fly passengers on the inbound
Bangkok-Helsinki sector.
Ole Orvér, Finnair’s chief commercial officer,
said: “We continue to maintain critical air connections for our
Europe-Asia transfer passengers and for Finland.
“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,” he said.
The airline says it is also temporarily closing its
lounge at the Schengen area of Helsinki Airport. Finnair’s lounges at the non-Schengen side have been shut since March.
Finnair is offering flexible change of travel dates
for all flights booked between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021.
The airline says it intends to start services to Busan, South Korea, next summer
after the launch of the route was delayed from this year.
Flights to San Francisco, Xi’an
and Beijing Daxing in China and Sapporo in Japan remain suspended.