Hong Kong – Helsinki freighter flights from 21 December  2014. The last freighter operation will depart Helsinki 20 December 2014 and return from Hong Kong 21 December 2014.

“This has been one of the hardest collective decisions to make during my years at Finnair Cargo. We have over the years received excellent support from the Hong Kong and European freight forwarders and markets, as well as received positive feedback on the freighter operations. The biggest challenge we have faced has been deteriorating yields, partly caused by currency fluctuations and partly by overcapacity in the markets. The financial result over the past year does not encourage and lead towards sustainable freighter operations over the next couple of critical years”, says vice president global sales Mikko Turtiainen.

Finnair Cargo will continue to serve the Hong Kong market with daily A340 passenger flights and add capacity with two additional weekly passenger flights during the summer season. 

“Finnair Cargo has a growth strategy that starts with the acquisition of the A350s. We will increase our long-haul passenger flights to approximately 140 weekly flights and double our cargo belly capacity by the year 2020. This will enable Finnair to offer additional frequencies between present city pairs and add new origins and destinations to our network in Asia. Additionally an area for development for Finnair Cargo in 2015 is to build on and broaden our European feeder network that presently consists of freighter and A340 widebody flights to and from Brussels”, continues Mikko.