Thaindian News

New Delhi, Aug 28 (IANS) Nordic carrier Finnair has added seven more destinations in India to its network, apart from flying directly to the national capital, thanks to the partnership with Vijay Mallya-led Kingfisher Airlines.

“We offer morning connections to Finnair’s vast European network of around 60 cities via Delhi and Helsinki which extends to Kingfisher passengers from Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur and Ahmedabad,” said Kari Stolbow, Finnair’s India director.

“Our partnership also allows Kingfisher passengers to earn and redeem miles on travels on the Finnair network across the globe. We have already deployed the most modern fleet to India — the average age is no more than one year,” Stolbow told IANS.

“While Asia has really driven our business, we have particularly seen very good growth in every segment in India. Now we are happy we are for the fact many new passengers from other cities are also using our connection services with Kingfisher,” he said.

“The numbers of such passengers is growing several hundred percent.”

Finnair hopes that once Kingfisher becomes a member of Oneworld, a leading pact among 12 global carriers, which expected sometime early next year, this cooperation will get a further push.

Stolbow said India was among the focus markets for India that was and one of the reasons why the carrier is launching full all-cargo flights to Mumbai next month, under a pact with Nordic Global Airlines. The new service will operate on Boeing MD-11Fs.

The top official said the performance of the carrier had also been encouraging this year, thanks to Asia in general and India in particular. The airline reported an increase of 23.9 percent in its scheduled traffic in July.

“Business travel demand continued to develop favourably in July, particularly in the Asian traffic. Our passenger load factors has also been very close to last year’s levels despite a substantial capacity growth,” Stolbow said.