Finnair to cut flights to South East Asia due slow season

Finland’s national carrier Finnair will in June cancel three weekly flights from Helsinki to Bangkok and onwards to Singapore and Hong Kong due to weak seasonal demand, but repeated its plans for new Asian routes.
     Finnair said in a statement on 26 May that it will resume normal daily flights to Bangkok and from there to Singapore and Hong Kong in July.
      “Demand for the Bangkok route is weak in June. We are directing demand to a smaller frequency of flights in order to keep the route profitable,” Finnair said in the statement.
     The group reiterated its Osaka route will be launched at the start of June, while the number of Tokyo flights would rise to three a week during the summer. It added plans for opening a Shanghai route were going ahead. Finnair has earlier slashed flights to Beijing due to the outbreak of SARS, which has hit its passenger numbers and capacity usage for a second month in April as the epidemic hits Asian travel. The group posted widening first-quarter loss last week due to globally weak demand and said the depth of 2003 losses would depend on the impact of SARS.

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