Volume Trends and the Market for Flight Operations

During 2002, member companies of the Association of European Airlines (AEA) recorded a fall in demand of 4.6 per cent and a capacity reduction of 8.8 per cent, which led to an improvement in cabin factor of 3.2 percentage points. Capacity among AEA airlines fell most on North Atlantic routes. In the same period, Finnair's cabin factor rose better than the AEA average, by 4.5 percentage points to 64.9 per cent.

The number of business class passengers on Finnair's international scheduled flights fell by 8.3 per cent. During the financial year, the proportion of business class travel on international scheduled flights fell by 1.2 percentage points to 20.9 per cent. The number of business class passengers has, however, grown significantly in long-haul traffic, particularly on Asian routes, while the number has fallen on European routes.

In 2002, the Asian routes' share of Finnairīs passenger and cargo revenue has risen to 17.0 per cent, whereas in the corresponding period two years ago the figure was 13.1 per cent.

The punctuality of Finnairīs scheduled passenger traffic was 89.3 per cent, compared with 87.4 per cent the previous year. The punctuality of long-haul traffic was at an all-time high.

Demand for leisure traffic fell 8.4 per cent, which corresponds to a 8.2 per cent contraction in capacity.

The number of cargo kilos carried grew by 0.5 per cent. Revenue tonne kilometres for all traffic by Finnair rose by 1.8 per cent and available tonne kilometres by 0.1 per cent, which led to an increase in the overall load factor of 1.0 percentage points to 57.8 per cent.