Finnair to operate more Helsinki-Rovaniemi flights

The national flag carrier Finnair will launch more flights on the Rovaniemi-Helsinki route as of early 2018, said Finavia that is responsible for maintaining and developing the country’s airports and air navigation system.

Finnair recently announced that it will increase the number of flights to Lapland and will offer more flights from Helsinki to Rovaniemi and Kuusamo.

From January to March 2018, Finnair will operate four new weekly flights to Rovaniemi on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. These new flights will use Embraer 190 aircraft.

Earlier this year, Finnair announced that it will also offer direct flights from London, Paris, and Zurich to Lapland next winter.

These will be opened in the middle of December 2017 and continue until the end of March 2018.

Finnair will operate flights between London Gatwick and Ivalo, Zurich and Kittilä, Frankfurt and Kittilä, and Paris and Kittilä.

Meanwhile, the Dutch tour operator Voigt Travel said it will run regular charter flights from the Netherlands to Rovaniemi this summer. The flights will be operated from Amsterdam to Rovaniemi twice a week in June to July 2017. The flight route will be triangular: Amsterdam-Rovaniemi-Tromsø-Amsterdam. Some of the passengers will continue with their journey from Rovaniemi to Norway.

Earlier, the German airline Germania operated two flights a week from Zurich to Rovaniemi from December 2016 to March 2017 and opened two other new routes from Germany to Lapland – Berlin-Rovaniemi and Duesseldorf-Kittila.

The number of passengers travelling through Rovaniemi Airport hit a record high in 2016, with 487,857 passengers travelling through Rovaniemi Airport, Finavia sources said.

The number is 2 percentage points higher than the number of passengers handled by the airport in 2015, in which, according to Finavia, a total of 478,347 passengers had travelled through it.

Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland and the official hometown of Santa Claus, is an urban oasis in the midst of Arctic wilderness where culture, wild activities, and fairytales come together.

A huge increase in the inflow of international tourists, introduction of new direct international flights, and a rise in domestic passengers are the main reasons behind the increased passenger volume at the airport, the sources said.

Earlier, a number of airlines launched direct flights to Rovaniemi from different cities in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland in the wake of the persistent increase in international tourists to Rovaniemi.

Finavia has in recent years invested heavily in tourism in Lapland, including 35 million euros invested in Lapland airports in 2014-2016.

As a part of the Finavia investment, Rovaniemi Airport went through massive renovations in 2016 at a cost of 13 million euros.