Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent closure of Russian airspace had a particularly strong impact on Finnair.

The Finnish flag carrier’s business model until that point had focused on providing some of the quickest Europe-Asia connections by virtue of its position on Russia’s Western edge.

With that advantage nixed by the war, Finnair has had to rethink its network, boosting flights to other continents and swallowing much longer flight times for its Asia routes.

Nevertheless, it has stuck with an Asian MRO provider for its widebody fleet maintenance, extending a contract for Airbus A330 and A350 base maintenance with HAECO until 2026.

The initial maintenance agreement was first executed in 2008 and since then, HAECO Hong Kong has completed over 100 maintenance inputs for Finland’s flag carrier. 

“HAECO is a flexible and capable organization that has shown its capability to renew in changing business environment. A positive, open dialogue allows for productive work to be carried out in cooperation with mutual benefit,” said Juha Ojala, senior vice-president technical operations of Finnair.

HAECO may also have benefitted from better-than-expected performance of Finnair’s Asian operations since the longer routings took effect.

“Although the closure of Russian airspace has reduced traffic to Asia and travel to China is only starting to increase, Finnair's position in traffic between Europe and Asia has remained strong,” said Finnair CEO Topi Manner in a recent earnings release.

Despite routings up to 40% longer than before the war, Asia was Finnair’s strongest market in the first quarter, accounting for 38% of passenger revenue, in part because of strong yields.

However, Manner also warned that “we cannot expect that the current strong demand situation is a permanent one.”

What that will mean for when HAECO’s contract is up in three years’ time remains to be seen, but from now the MRO provider continues its strong relationship with Finnair.

In addition to base maintenance support, HAECO Hong Kong also partners with HAECO Cabin Solutions to provide cabin interiors support to Finnair.

Both companies have been working on the long-haul cabin retrofit program on the airline’s A330 and A350 fleets since 2021.