Citing a decline in demand for services and flights as a result of the current coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, Finnair has made adjustments to its traffic program and resourcing in order to minimise the negative financial impact on the airline.
Finnair communicates flight cancellations directly to customers who have bookings on the following flights. Customers can then either seek a full ticket refund or postpone their travel by contacting Finnair customer services. The airline is also offering customers who have bookings for any Finnair flights in March 2020 the possibility to change their travel date to the same destination until the end of June 2020, if they so wish.
Finnair’s Agent Helpdesk can be reached on 1800 491 791 – option 3 and is available Monday to Friday from 8.00 to 20.00 AEDT and on Saturday & Sunday from 9.00 to 18.00 AEDT.
The airline says its Agent Helpdesk team “… is doing its outmost to answer all the calls in a timely manner, although the number of calls they receive has increased in the last few weeks.”
Adjustments to Finnair traffic
Finnair is cancelling its flights to Mainland China (Guangzhou, Nanjing, Beijing Capital, Beijing Daxing, Shanghai, Xi´an) until April 30, 2020.
In April, Finnair will reduce its Hong Kong service to one daily frequency instead of the normal two daily frequencies.
Finnair is cancelling two weekly flights from its Osaka route, and will fly to Osaka during the summer season (March 29 – October 24, 2020) with 10 weekly frequencies instead of the earlier scheduled 12 weekly frequencies.
Finnair is cancelling its daily flights to Seoul from March 9 to April 16, 2020.
Finnair is postponing the opening of its new route to Busan from March 31, 2020 to July 1, 2020.
Finnair is also cancelling its flights between Helsinki and Milan from March 9 to April 7, 2020, following an updated travel advisory from the Finnish Foreign Ministry concerning Milan.
Finnair will continue to follow the impacts of the coronavirus situation in demand for flights and will communicate further changes to its flights in due course.
Adjustments in resourcing and other costs
Finnair will adjust its resourcing to the situation and will start negotiations on planned temporary layoffs affecting the entire Finnair personnel based in Finland. According to the current estimate, the possible layoffs would be implemented so that all employees within the co-operations process would be temporarily laid off for a 14-30 day period. The negotiations start on March 12, 2020 and are expected to last for two weeks. Similar personnel measures will also be taken in countries outside Finland. As announced on February 28, 2020, Finnair is also adjusting its other costs globally, such as sales and marketing activities and other external spend.
