Finnair carried just over one million passengers in May, an increase of 3.2% when compared to the same period of the year prior.
May was a rather turbulent month for the Finnish carrier, as it was forced to cancel hundreds of flights due to industrial action by the Finnish Aviation Union at its main hub, Helsinki Airport.
Despite these operational cuts, the airline said that passenger numbers increased “significantly” on North Atlantic and Asian routes, with a slight increase also in European traffic, while passenger numbers remained stable on domestic routes and declined on services to the Middle East.
Capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASKs), increased by 6.6% in May. Finnair said that capacity growth was driven by an earlier return of Seattle services to the summer schedule compared to 2024, along with more frequencies being added to the rest of the country, in particular to Dallas.
In Asia, increased capacity was driven by additional frequencies to Osaka and Nagoya in Japan.
Finnair's traffic, measured in revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs), increased by 8.3% on the year prior, with the airline's load factor averaging at 72.4% for the month - an increase of 1.1 percentage point.
Total cargo tonnes declined by 4.2%, Finnair said this was driven by a decline in Middle Eastern and European cargo traffic. Revenue cargo tonne kilometres remained stable.
In May, 80.6% of all Finnair flights arrived on schedule compared to 77.2% in the comparison period.