With its northerly base in Helsinki, Finland's national carrier has traditionally had a strong focus on building its network to Asia. Since 2005 the oneworld carrier has more than doubled its Asia network and currently operates 60 weekly flights from Europe to Asia - illustrated by the table below.
|
FINNAIR ASIA NETWORK 2010 |
FINNAIR ASIA NETWORK 2005 |
||
|
Destination |
Weekly Flights |
Destination |
Weekly Flights |
|
Shanghai |
7 |
Bangkok |
7 |
|
Hong Kong |
7 |
Beijing |
7 |
|
7 |
Shanghai |
5 |
|
|
Bangkok |
7 |
Osaka |
5 |
|
7 |
Guangzhou |
3 |
|
|
Osaka Kansai |
7 |
Tokyo Narita |
2 |
|
Seoul Incheon |
6 |
||
|
Nagoya |
6 |
||
|
Delhi |
6 |
||
|
Total |
60 |
29 |
|
Source Flightbase September 14-20, 2010 v September 14-20, 2005
GDS uploads this week also show that Finnair plans to increase frequency on existing markets, going 12 times weekly to Hong Kong and daily to both Nagoya and Seoul from May 2011.
FINNAIR's POSITION IN THE EUROPE-ASIA MARKET
Finnair is clearly focused on transfer passengers from Europe to Asia via Helsinki, a market that is particularly lucrative for the airline. According to IATA BSP data between April 2009-2010, over 55 million passengers flew between the two continents (two-way) with Finnair achieving a 2% share of the market, or 1.1 million passengers.
Looking at Finnair's competitors, Lufthansa is the leading carrier in terms of passenger share with a 6% share of this market or over 3.2 million passengers. The leading city pairs are London Heathrow-Singapore, and London Heathrow-Hong Kong. The table below illustrates the top 10 carriers in terms of passenger share between Europe and Asia:
|
Carrier |
Passengers (Two-Way April 09-10) |
Passenger Share |
|
3,266,848 |
6% |
|
|
3,212,225 |
6% |
|
|
2,867,696 |
5% |
|
|
2,277, 939 |
4% |
|
|
2,221,735 |
4% |
|
|
2,160,231 |
4% |
|
|
2,074,202 |
4% |
|
|
1,842,739 |
3% |
|
|
1,754, 116 |
3% |
|
|
1,741,280 |
3% |
|
|
Others |
32,126,849 |
58% |
|
Total |
55,545,860 |
100% |
WHY SINGAPORE FOR FINNAIR?
Although Finnair has a limited share of the overall market, its routes to Asia are high yielding with over 322,000 passengers, or 28% of its entire passenger total, travelling in either J or F class.
Finnair's leading route is currently Helsinki-Bangkok, which accounts for 8% of all its Asia passengers. The new route to Singapore is therefore interesting as Singapore used to be an extension of its Bangkok operation.
The decision to serve Singapore also seems justified, as Singapore is one of Helsinki's leading non-served markets, with over 15,000 passengers flying the route between April 09-10. Plus, 17% of this traffic flew with SkyTeam member KLM.
Singapore has also traditionally delivered high yielding business class passengers but has struggled to deliver leisure point-to-point traffic. This may, however, change with the opening of the Marina Bay Sands Casino just a few weeks ago, one of the largest casinos in the world.
The connecting market into South East Asia and Australasia will also be of interest to Finnair, as Singapore has always been an important transit market. It is well-established as a strong Star Alliance hub, thanks to Singapore Airlines, and has also been an important point for oneworld carriers, BA and Qantas, heading to and from Australia.
Plus, Singapore also hubs Air France passengers through the airport with a long standing interline agreement with Qantas. In addition to this, the recent interline agreement between the Air France-KLM and Jetstar, which sees a codeshare on the group's new long-haul routes from Singapore to Melbourne and Auckland, also served to illustrate Singapore's importance as a transit market.
Would it therefore make sense for fellow oneworld partner Finnair to join this Jetstar agreement at Singapore?
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