Finnair to introduce more flights to Asia

Finnair's summer timetable comes into force next week, on March 30, and the new schedules will bring a significant number of new flights to the Far East, as well as extra services to Italy. The new route to Osaka will be launched in June, and flights to Shanghai begin in September.

In line with the company's strategy, Finnair will put plenty of emphasis on flights to the Far East. Flights to Osaka, for example, will run three times a week, on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays (returning in each case the next day).

The addition of a Saturday departure to Beijing will mean that Finnair's flights to the Chinese capital run six times a week, and in the autumn they will be increased to daily departures.

Flights to Shanghai will run three times a week to start with, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The departure is in the late afternoon which makes for good connections with flights from the rest of Europe at Helsinki.

Up until the end of August, flights to New York will be operated as a daily frequency, but as of the beginning of September they will be reduced to five times a week, with the Tuesday and Saturday departures withdrawn from the  schedule. This allows for the MD11 aircraft capacity to be shifted to the Far East routes.

More flights to Italy

More flights to Italy will be added to the schedule, with two flights more to Milan, making a total of 11 weekly flights, and two new flights to Rome, which means the popular service to the Italian capital will be daily.

The Helsinki-Manchester-Helsinki services changes on April 1 to a non-stop service, without the Stockholm stopover, for the morning return flights from Manchester and the evening outbound flights from Helsinki.

The evening 18.55 flight to Paris is to be withdrawn, along with the 7.35 morning flight, but the French capital will still be served four times a day.

Finnair will stop flying direct flights between Turku and Stockholm at the beginning of April. At the same time, Finnair will improve its connections between Helsinki and Turku with a new flight, AY230, departing from Turku at 17.25 and arriving at Helsinki at 18.00. This flight has many useful onward connections and operates daily except Saturdays.

Tampere's Pirkkola airport will close for runway surfacing work from June 28 to July 14. Finnair intends to operate a bus service to replace certain services during this period. For flights to Kuopio, Finnair is changing from Airbus to ATR aircraft.