newstodate.aero

Dec 18, 2019 (newstodate): Norwegian has played a pivotal role in the sustained growth in passenger volumes at Finland's Helsinki Airport.
   In the current schedule, Norwegian is offering direct non-stop flights from Helsinki to 21 international destinations, but with the recent over-all scaling-down of the carrier's network, uncertainty surrounds the operations at Helsinki Airport in the coming summer 2020 schedule.
   Norwegian entered the Finnish market with flights from April 2010 to Helsinki from Stockholm and Oslo, bolstering its presence in the Finnish market by setting up an operational base at Helsinki Airport from spring 2011 with three aircraft serving a network comprising 13 international and two domestic routes.
   The carrier now accounts for 15 percent of the total pax volume through Helsinki Airport, ranking 2nd after Finnair that generates 65 percent of traffic, while SAS and Lufthansa share the #3 position with only three percent each.
   -We have seen a heavy capacity reduction in Helsinki by Norwegian this winter, but Summer 20 is looking fairly good, says Petri Vuori, Finavia VP, Route Development.  
   -Norwegian is reducing Helsinki capacity by a couple of percentage-points, but not too heavily. They have communicated to us that S20 is not fully finalized yet, so we have to wait to see, says Mr Vuori.