Finnair reports positive Third Quarter Results

Finnair's turnover grew by a third to 471.2 million euros, a 13.4% increase, while operating profit doubled from the previous year to 32.1 million euros. The operating profit for the first nine months of the year was 86.1 million euros.

"The third-quarter result shows that we are a strongly profitable company. We doubled the operating profit, even though high fuel costs consumed the fruits of our productivity programmes," said Finnair's President and CEO Keijo Suila.

Strong growth in demand as well as a positive trend in the price of air tickets contributed to the airline's increase in turnover in the third quarter. The average price of flight tickets in Finnair's scheduled passenger traffic has risen during the first nine months by 3% from last year.

Finnair's scheduled passenger traffic has grown by nearly 10% in the first nine months. The most significant sources of growth have been Asian traffic and the substantial increase in market share of the Swedish FlyNordic subsidiary on the Scandinavian market. In January-September, the passenger load factor for all of Finnair's traffic improved by two percentage points to 73%.

Due to the higher fuel prices, unit costs of flight operations rose in the third quarter by nearly 5%. In January-September unit costs were slightly lower, however, than the previous year.

The strong expansion of Asian traffic will continue. Finnair's long-haul fleet will be supplemented this year by a seventh aircraft and next year by an eighth.

"A few years from now, we expect our Asian fleet to have around ten aircraft. Each year we will add one or two new destinations in Asia and increase the flight frequency on our present routes. This autumn we began flying to Guangzhou in China and next summer we will open a route to Nagoya in Japan," said Suila.

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