Sim Kok Chwee, Singapore (2010-07-02)

FOUR years after withdrawing from the Singapore market, Finnair will return to the Helsinki-Singapore route with daily non-stop flights on Airbus A340s. The  services will start on May 30, 2011.

Finnair was operating four weekly flights via Bangkok before withdrawing on May 16, 2007. The mix of leisure travellers to Bangkok and higher-yield corporate travellers to Singapore did not offer the airline an optimal return.

Shorter booking lead time, common among corporate travellers, meant that most of the available capacity was sold to Bangkok, and Finnair had to resort to low fares on the Bangkok-Singapore-Bangkok sectors.

With the new daily non-stop services, Finnair is now better placed to serve the demand generated by the strong presence of Finnish and other Scandinavian companies in Singapore. According to the Changi Airport Group, traffic between the Nordic countries and Singapore grew eight per cent between April 2009 and April 2010, with Singapore Airlines providing the only services between Copenhagen and Singapore three times weekly.