Finnair Celebrates 70 Years At Its Helsinki Hub

Today marks the 70^th anniversary of Finnair at Helsinki’s airport, and Finnair will be celebrating its 100^th birthday next year.

As one might expect this Nordic carrier is Helsinki’s largest customer.

Jukka Glader, Finnair’s VP of ground operations, said:

“Helsinki has played a huge part in our history, being our home for the last seven decades, and has developed over time to become a major departures and transit point.”

An extensive redevelopment programme is in hand which will improve arrival, departure and transit facilities.

The latter is important because as a sixth-freedom airline Finnair would, in normal times, take many travellers from the rest of Europe to Asia via its Helsinki hub.

I say “normal times” because as readers might expect Finnair is subject to the Russian overflying ban.

Most of the Finnair long-haul network covers flights to Asia and especially to northeast Asia. To maintain its competitive flight schedules Finnair simply must overfly Russia, Mongolia and China.