A lot of new routes to open at Finavia airports – up to 24 brand new starts for the winter season

Numerous new route openings will be celebrated around Finland in the coming weeks and months. The global winter season for air traffic began on Sunday, 29 October, and up to 24 new international routes will open at Finavia airports during the season.

“At Finavia, we cooperate continuously with airlines and our regional partners to ensure that the route offering remains comprehensive and that Finland remains accessible. The upcoming winter season is a testament to this long-term work. Our airports connect Finland to more than 130 destinations around the world,” says Petri Vuori, Finavia’s Senior Vice President responsible for route development.

Lapland is about to have a record-breaking season

A total of 18 new routes to destinations around Europe will open at Finavia’s Lapland airports. In total, 35 direct international routes will be flown to Lapland next winter. Airlines are offering an additional 240,000 passenger seats (+16%) on flights to and from Lapland compared to the previous winter. Of the increase in seats, approximately 150,000 are on flights to and from Rovaniemi Airport.

Ryanair will start flights to Rovaniemi from Liverpool and Milan in October–November. In December, EasyJet will open routes to Santa Claus’s hometown from as many as five different destinations: Edinburgh, Paris, London, Amsterdam and Naples.

The super day for route openings is 2 December, when Finavia welcomes new routes from up to four different airlines. On that day, Iberia Airlines will start flights from Madrid, while Vueling will start flying from Barcelona, Finnair from Tromsø and Austrian Airlines from Vienna. Eurowings will also open a route from Rovaniemi to Berlin in January 2024.

In addition to new the routes, Ryanair will resume flights to Rovaniemi from Dublin, London Stansted and Brussels Charleroi. EasyJet, on the other hand, will continue to fly to London Gatwick, Bristol, Manchester and Milan. KLM will maintain its routes from Rovaniemi to Amsterdam, while Air France will keep flying to Paris, Turkish Airlines to Istanbul and Eurowings to Düsseldorf.

Starting in November, Kittilä will be connected to the UK with two new EasyJet routes, as the company starts flying to both Manchester and London Gatwick Airport. The routes returning to Kittilä Airport are Air France’s Paris route, Eurowings’ Düsseldorf route, Air Baltic’s Riga route and Lufthansa’s Munich route.

During the Christmas holidays, Eurowings will start flying from both Ivalo and Kuusamo airports to Düsseldorf. The Swiss airline Edelweiss Air will also start scheduled flights from Ivalo and Kuusamo to Zürich in early February 2024. In addition, Lufthansa will resume flights from Frankfurt to both Ivalo and Kuusamo.

Finnair will increase its flights from Helsinki Airport to all Finavia airports in Lapland for the winter. In addition to Finnair, Norwegian also operates flights from Helsinki Airport to Rovaniemi.

“Lapland’s tourist season will be a record-breaking one this winter. Next, we will look even more closely at building the summer season in Lapland, as well as the opportunities it brings to the region,” Vuori says.

The comprehensive winter route offering is not limited to Lapland

Air Baltic will start offering four new destinations at Tampere-Pirkkala Airport in October–December: Tenerife and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, the company’s first domestic destination in Finland, Kittilä, and daily flights to Tallinn. In addition, the company will continue its current flights to Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Malaga and Riga.

In December, Lufthansa will open its long-awaited route from Oulu to Munich at the heart of Central Europe, and SAS will start flying from Helsinki Airport to Oslo right at the beginning of the winter season. Vueling will also return at the end of October to fly from Helsinki Airport to Barcelona, now with three weekly flights.

In addition to a wide range of European routes, Helsinki Airport offers direct flights to many long-haul destinations by several airlines. Finnair offers flights to destinations in North America, the Middle East and Asia, while Japan Airlines flies to Tokyo Haneda Airport in Japan and Juneyao Airlines flies to Zhengzhou and Shanghai in China.

Below is a list of all new routes at Finavia airports for the 2023–2024 winter season.

Rovaniemi Airport

Kittilä Airport

Ivalo Airport

Kuusamo Airport

Tampere-Pirkkala Airport

Oulu Airport

Helsinki Airport