Pact with Kingfisher sees Finnair's Asia traffic look up

Led by growing traffic from Asia, especially India where it has signed an accord with Kingfisher Airlines, as also by leisure travel, Nordic carrier Finnair has reported an 11.1% increase in its scheduled passenger traffic in August.

"Finnair's Asian traffic capacity measured in available seat km grew by 28.7% and traffic measured in revenue passenger kilometres increased by 20.3%," a senior official with the airline told IANS.

The carrier recently added seven more destinations in India to its network, in addition to flying directly to the national capital, in partnership with the Vijay Mallya-led airlines.

"We offer morning connections to Finnair's vast European network of around 60 cities via Delhi and Helsinki which extends to Kingfisher passengers from Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur and Ahmedabad," said Kari Stolbow, Finnair's India director.

"While Asia has really driven our business, we have particularly seen very good growth in every segment in India. Now we are happy we are for the fact many new passengers from other cities are also using our connection services with Kingfisher," Stolbow told IANS.

"The numbers of such passengers is growing several hundred percent."

Finnair hopes that once Kingfisher becomes a member of Oneworld, a leading pact among 12 global carriers, which is expected sometime early next year, this cooperation will get a further push.

Stolbow said India was among the focus markets for India and that was among the reasons why the carrier was launching full all-cargo flights to Mumbai later this month under a pact with Nordic Global Airlines. The new service will operate on Boeing MD-11Fs.

According to company officials, the airline's overall capacity grew 13.3% during the period under review as demand from Europe to Japan continued to recover from the shocks of a global slowdown in late 2008.

"Travel demand from Japan to Europe has almost returned to its earlier levels, and load factors are good on routes to Japan," said Erno Hilden, chief financial officer, adding that punctuality had also returned to last year's level of around 90%.

"As many as 90.4%of all flights arrived on schedule. In scheduled traffic, the arrival punctuality was higher at 90.8%."

In July, the nordic carrier had reported an increase of 23.9%in its scheduled traffic, also due to strong demand from the Asian region. The overall capacity also grew by 14.7% as demand from Europe to Japan continued to recover.