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Apr 27, 2023 (newstodate): Finnair Group's Q1, 2023, Interim Report is now out: "We are heading in the right direction, but the road to recovery is a long one!"
   -This was the third consecutive profitable quarter after ten loss-making quarters caused by the pandemic and the closure of Russian airspace, Finnair Group CEO Topi Manner says.
   -We cannot expect that the current strong demand situation is a permanent one. Our operating environment remains challenging in many respects, as the fuel price has remained high, inflation has not subsided, interest rates have risen, and the Russian airspace remains closed as the war in Ukraine continues.
   -In Q1, the global air freight market remained disrupted, and even though air cargo yields were elevated compared to the pre-pandemic era, declining market prices - combined with regular seasonality patterns - resulted in lower cargo revenue quarter-on-quarter. Finnair estimates that cargo demand will continue to soften and that prices will decline as market capacity increases and disruptions wane.
   -Due to the closure of Russian airspace, Finnair lost its hub’s unique geographic advantage, as flying around Russia lengthens the routings between Finnair's hub and the mega-cities in Japan, South Korea and China by 15–40 percent, depending on the destination. With its new strategy, Finnair is therefore placing more emphasis on the West, the Middle East and India in its network.  
   -Despite the longer routings, the company continues to serve key Asian markets, focusing on the most profitable cities. With the new strategy, the European network and traffic structure is optimized to increase efficiency, because the transfer traffic via Helsinki between Asia and Europe, which was the foundation of the previous strategy, will decrease.