Norse Atlantic won’t launch service across the Atlantic until early next year, but competition is still on the horizon for Stockholm’s transatlantic traffic. Finnair announced plans to launch a trio of new routes this winter connecting the Swedish capital and the United States.
We’re excited to provide American travelers easier and more frequent access to Finland and beyond through our expanded services. We’ve seen continued interest and demand for flights from our US markets and are pleased to grow and deliver the distinguished flying experience that Finnair is known for.
– Caroline Borawski, General Manager, North America at Finnair
Miami gets first dibs on the new service, launching with twice weekly service on 23 October. That expands to 4x weekly on 29 November.
Los Angeles adds 3x weekly Stockholm service at the beginning of April. JFK gets its extra Sweden flights 3-4x per week from 7 December.
The routes will operate through 22 April.
In addition to these three routes Finnair will also extend its O’Hare-Helsinki service through the winter. Historically it only operated in the summer season.
It is not all good news for Finnair across the Atlantic, however. As part of its plans to add these routes the carrier trimmed Helsinki frequencies in those markets.
The new routes also appear to be betting on a change in border health policies occurring in the months ahead. Sweden currently does not permit entry of Americans, even if vaccinated. Finland does, however, permit fully vaccinated Americans to enter.
All flights will be operated on Finnair’s A350 fleet.
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Sweden will be opening up to “fully vaccinated” Americans in much the same way as Denmark did earlier this summer. Amusingly, the Swedish excuse for not having done so — and still not doing so — is based on their narrative that there is no standard proof of vaccination in the US. [CDC cards work elsewhere in the EU/Schengen area, but Sweden still refuses to accept them.]
Finnair and Eurowings are trying to pick up from the ashes of Norwegian in Stockholm.
Good to know. I hadn’t seen the timing on that yet and the current restrictions are still pretty strong.
And, yes, they’re hoping to pick up the ashes of Norwegian. But the Scandinavian long-haul markets were the weakest of that operation, even in the before times. I’m curious to see what demand really returns in the winter as the pandemic continues.
I am assuming Finnair will eventually give up the ARN long-haul flying — if it even starts — or make a move to try to merge with SAS. If they end up naming it NAS — for Nordic instead of Scandinavian — Norwegian may have something to say about that.
About Sweden eventually accepting CDC cards, it has indicated it will wait until the EU/EC recommend that it do so.
The embassy here has staff who believe there may be more non-stop service between ARN and the US than the little that has existed this month, but I’m not of the opinion of those people believing that at this point. While I hope to be wrong if but for my own personal convenience.