Finnair’s European Traffic up by 20% in April 2007

This April, Finnair scheduled traffic increased by 14.2% the same month last year. The growth was driven primarily by European traffic, where the amount of revenue passenger kilometers increased by 20.2%. This demand was positively influenced by new openings in Europe: Bucharest, Gdansk, Nuremberg, Lisbon and Ljubljana.

Asian traffic has increased during the early part of the year by over 30% compared to the previous year. In April however the growth increased by 18.2% due to heavy maintenance of the airline's long-haul fleet. May's figures are also affected by this maintenance, but estimated growth in Asian traffic for the whole year remains at 30%.

Thanks to 76-100-seater Embraer planes, capacity on domestic routes has been better allocated. This has been seen as capacity cuts and improved passenger load factor, which rose 1.5 p.u. to 62.1%. Passenger load factor in Finnair scheduled traffic was on the previous year’s level of 73.8%. The number of passengers carried was also on the same level as 2006 at 656,030.

Finnair traffic, measured in passenger kilometers for all airlines of the group, increased by 9.3% in April, while capacity was up by 10.1%, resulting in a passenger load factor of 74.7%, 0.6 points lower than last year. All Finnair Group airlines altogether transported 728,946 passengers.

Finnair's Tallinn-based subsidiary Aero AS, carried 30,810 passengers (-54.8%) on routes between Helsinki and the Baltic capitals and within Southern Finland, during April. Stockholm-based FlyNordic carried 85,915 passengers (- 14%).

Arrival punctuality of scheduled flights was 86.4% (based on a fifteen minute standard), 1.1 points lower than in January 2006. Including leisure flights arrival punctuality was 85.6% (-0.5 p.p).

Scheduled traffic

In scheduled traffic (international + domestic) revenue passenger kilometres increased by 14.2%. The change in capacity was 14.3% while the passenger load factor was 73.8%, 0.1 percentage points lower than last year.

In scheduled international traffic, the total number of passengers was up by 8.3%. Capacity in ASKs was 19.1%, while RPKs increased by 17.8%.

In European scheduled traffic, ASKs increased by 19.9%, and as RPKs increased by 20.2%, the passenger load factor was 69.4%, up 0.2 points over the previous year.

In North Atlantic scheduled traffic, capacity increased by 2.6%. Change in RPKs was -1.1%, and the passenger load factor for April was 83%, 3.1 points lower than in 2006.

In Asian scheduled traffic, the capacity increase was 20.6%. Passenger traffic was up by 18.2% and passenger load factor was 80.4%, 1.6 percentage points down.

Domestic scheduled traffic decreased by 17.1% on a capacity decrease of 19.2%. Passenger load factor increased by 1.5 percentage points to 62.1%.

Leisure traffic

ASKs for leisure traffic decreased in April by 6.5%, and RPKs decreased by 8.6%, resulting in a passenger load factor of 79.1%, 1.9 points lower than last year.

Cargo

Cargo traffic decreased by 3.2% in terms of cargo tonnes carried. Growth in scheduled traffic was 2.1%. Increase in Asian traffic was 16.9%. Volume in European traffic decreased by 21.5%. In North-Atlantic traffic cargo volume increased by 2.6%. Cargo traffic carried on chartered cargo flights decreased by 35.4%. The cargo load factor was 49.1%. The cargo load factor in the Far Eastern traffic was 64.0% and in the North Atlantic traffic 79.8%. Cargo traffic suffers from imbalance in demand between Europe and Asia. The demand is healthy from Asia to Europe, but over-capacity in the Scandinavian market has pressed cargo load factor in Europe-Asia traffic.

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