April 2011 Traffic Performance

The situation in Japan had an adverse effect on the Asian traffic demand in April.

“Overall load factors remained at the previous month’s level due, among other things, to the prolongation of the Japan situation. Uncertainty concerning Japan significantly reduced demand from Europe to Japan in April. In leisure traffic, the situation in Tunisia and Egypt had a relatively stronger impact even than in March, because the intention had been to continue cancelled flight series over Easter, and Easter took place this year at the end of April,” says Finnair CFO Erno Hildén.

In preparation for expected growth in long-haul traffic, the average aircraft size was increased in narrow-body traffic by flying some of the services operated with the Embraer fleet with larger Airbus aircraft. Finnair’s 11th Embraer 190 entered service on April 1, 2011. With demand being weaker than expected, these factors had an adverse effect on load factors in European and domestic traffic.

The closure of European airspace due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland halted all Finnair traffic for a week In April last year. Neither month therefore represents the normal situation, so sensible comparison of figures is challenging.

The summer season began in Finnair’s flight traffic on March 27, 2011. During April, scheduled flights were launched to Nice, Ljubljana, Lisbon, Krakow and Venice. Additional frequencies were also added on the Gdansk and Stuttgart routes. The Nice service was previously operated as a leisure flight.

The arrival punctuality of Finnair’s flights remained good in April; 86.5% (87%) of all flights arrived on schedule. The arrival punctuality of scheduled flights was 86.9% (88.6%).