Finnair on Monday announced further adjustments to its flight schedule for the upcoming 2022/2023 winter season, including a series of major cuts to its operations between the Nordic countries and the United States.
The Finnish carrier will cancel all flights to Chicago, where during the Winter season it would operate four weekly frequencies from Helsinki with A330-300 aircraft.
Finnair will also discontinue its flights between Stockholm-Arlanda airport and Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, to which it previously had scheduled three flights a week in each case with Airbus A350-900 aircraft.
The new adjustment announced today also includes the cancellation of flights between Helsinki and Krabi, Thailand, as well as from Stockholm-Arlanda to Bangkok and Phuket, and the reduction of weekly frequencies to Tokyo (where they will now operate out of Haneda Airport instead of Narita, claiming they can offer better connections there thanks to Japan Airlines).
«Our operating environment has changed dramatically this year with the war in Ukraine and the subsequent closure of Russian airspace,» Finnair said in a press release.
«Our aim is to operate a traffic plan that is as economically viable as possible. We regret any disruption and inconvenience the changes may cause to your travel plans,» they concluded.
According to information obtained by Aviacionline through Cirium, during August Finnair has a weekly offer of 20,244 seats to and from the United States, connecting Helsinki with Seattle (3 weekly flights), Chicago-O’Hare (one daily flight), Los Angeles (3 weekly flights), New York-JFK (one daily flight) and Dallas-DFW (4 weekly flights); as well as Stockholm-Arlanda with Los Angeles (4 weekly flights) and New York-JFK (one daily flight). This represents a growth of 65.8% compared to the same month in 2019.
Still including the cuts announced today, Finnair had 350,000 seats scheduled to and from the US between November 2022 and March 2023, 116.4% higher than the 2019/2020 winter season, prior to the outbreak of the pandemic.
But with these cuts, and always considering the currently loaded schedule (which may vary), the capacity to and from the United States during the winter season will be 196,000 seats, a growth of 21% compared to 2019 but a collapse of 82% compared to 2021/2022.
