Finnair will use A320-200 wet-leased from SmartLynx in September/October ch-aviation PRO exclusive

Finnair (AY, Helsinki Vantaa) will wet-lease Dash 8-400 turboprop capacity from Norway's Wideroe (WF, Bodø) for its services between Helsinki Vantaa and Norwegian airports, ch-aviation schedule analysis has revealed.

The wet-leased Bombardier aircraft will operate up to 4x weekly to Tromsø between May 18 to August 15, 2019, and 5x weekly to Trondheim starting on June 5.

Wideroe already wet-leases E190-E2 capacity to Finnair. The Embraer regional jets are deployed on behalf of the Finnish flag carrier from Helsinki to Tromso (1x weekly), Bergen (7x weekly), Berlin Tegel (3x weekly), and Vienna (7x weekly). The upcoming wet-lease of a Q400 will not affect the existing cooperation, including on the route to Tromso. The flights to Berlin and Vienna are only scheduled to operate until March 30.

The Norwegian regional specialist operates ten Q400s, on top of twenty-two Dash 8-100s, three Dash 8-200s, and six Dash 8-300s. Finnair, on the other hand, does not operate any turboprops in-house but wet-leases twelve...

Finnair (AY, Helsinki Vantaa) will wet-lease A321-200 capacity from Iberia (IB, Madrid Barajas) for its daily Helsinki Vantaa-Madrid Barajas route effective April 1, 2019.

"The lease will last for a duration of 12 months and will cover a shortage of aircraft as Finnair continues to grow its operations. With the leased aircraft, the flight deck crew comes from Iberia, while the cabin crew is Finnair’s. However, during the first operating month of the lease, the flights will be operated with Iberia’s cabin crew, and there will be one Finnair crew member on board to support the delivery of Finnair's customer service concept," the Finnish carrier said in a statement.

The carrier also said that outsourced cabin crew hired through an employment firm Adecco and based out of Madrid and Barcelona El Prat will join the Finnish airline's payroll as of April 1, 2019.

Finnair operates up to 10x weekly between Helsinki and Madrid but will reduce the frequency to 7x weekly in summer 2019. Iberia itself does not serve...

jetBlue Airways (B6, New York JFK) petitioned the US Department of Transportation (DOT) on January 30, 2019, to combine the two pending transatlantic joint venture antitrust immunity applications into a single proceeding and then open an in-depth competitive analysis.

The American carrier has so far unsuccessfully been trying to force a thorough review of the proposed merger of the Delta Air Lines-Air France-KLM and Delta-Virgin Atlantic transatlantic joint ventures into one partnership. It has now included the other expanding JV including American Airlines, IAG International Airlines Group, and Finnair.

"Both applications present common issues that the Department must adjudicate, including the current competitive landscape in transatlantic markets, issues related to slot access at various key European airports - most importantly, London Heathrow - and the broader policy question of how to treat two existing immunized joint ventures that are seeking to grow through equity investments and corporate restructuring," jetBlue wrote in its motion.

In addition, the Skyteam JV involving KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and...

Finnair (AY, Helsinki Vantaa) will launch a new seasonal route to Sapporo Chitose, its fifth destination in Japan, for the Winter 2019/20 season. The service will become Sapporo's maiden long-haul European flight.

The route will be operated 2x weekly between December 15, 2019, and March 27, 2020 using A330-300s.

According to the ch-aviation capacity module, the airport's intercontinental network also includes Hawaiian Airlines' flights to Honolulu.

For its part, Finnair already serves Tokyo Narita, Osaka Kansai, and Nagoya Chubu in Japan on a year-round basis, as well as Fukuoka seasonally in the summer.