Finnair’s Plans Update

Finnair´s sudden decision to cancel all flights to Singapore from mid-May and at the same time scrap the planned route to Kuala Lumpur came as a surprise at the end of January. Finnair has been very bullish about the Asian market and Kuala Lumpur was supposed to be a new destination.
Jere Tala, Finnair´s Country Manager for Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia explains this sudden turnaround.
“The most important reason is that we want to better utilize our existing flights. By not flying our tail-end flights to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur via Bangkok, we can use our aircrafts more efficiently. Now we are able to fly all long haul flights in less than 24 hours.”
To operate a return flight from Helsinki to Singapore via Bangkok takes Finnair around 30 hours. To only operate Bangkok saves the airline 7-8 hours on a roundtrip. The total time savings when cancelling Singapore and Kuala Lumpur means that Finnair can increase their weekly flights to Asia from 61 to 66 with the existing fleet of aircraft.
The increased capacity by cancelling flights to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur will be used for new destinations such as Mumbai in India and to fly more frequent to existing destinations.
“We have been trying to get the route to Mumbai for some time and a couple of weeks ago we got it. If we have it we have to use it, otherwise we risk to lose it.”, says Jere Tala.
At the moment there are no future plans to open Singapore or Kuala Lumpur again. Finnair´s new objective is to serve all destinations on a daily basis and Kuala Lumpur was only going to be serviced three times a week.
Finnair will not give up the market in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and are at the moment looking into a code share agreement with other airlines.
“But of course we are not denying that our product is not as attractive as it had been with our own flights.” says Jere Tala.

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