How Finnair’s Huge Bet on Faster Flights to Asia Suddenly Came Undone

“We created a path through the pandemic,” Mr. Manner said, but it always was intended to lead “back to the Asia strategy.”

No longer. Last month, the company officially announced an about-face.

“We started to pivot our network toward the West,” Mr. Manner said, expanding its partnership with American Airlines, British Airways and other carriers. In the spring, it launched four new weekly flights from Dallas-Fort Worth and three from Seattle. New routes from Helsinki to Stockholm, Copenhagen, Mumbai, India, and Doha, Qatar, have also been unveiled. As jet fuel prices skyrocket, the airline is also renting out planes and crews to other airlines, and it plans to shrink the size of its fleet and staff, and to slash costs.

Finnair, which has lost 1.3 billion euros over the past three years, said it hoped to return to profitability in 2024.

“It will take some time before the company gets to see if this is the right decision,” said Jaakko Tyrväinen, an airline analyst with SEB, a Nordic financial services group.

For the new Helsinki terminal — which opened in June — a strategy shift was also needed.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/20/business/economy/finnair-helsinki-airport-russia.html