Second daily Shanghai flight in process?

Heard from a "well informed source" that AY is putting some heavy hitters into lobbying for a second daily flight between HEL and PVG. Some changes happening soon if my information is correct...

A night flight China to Europe similar to the present HKG - HEL would be perfect but what about the return? When does an AM departure from HEL land at PVG anyway?

Very difficult to see any business people taking such a flight...AM departure ex-HEL would mean very late night arrival with a full (working) day wasted and also very difficult to fly long daytime flights to east in terms of jet lag..AY used to have a 9am'ish departure to BKK and it didn't make any sense at all..impossible to connect anywhere but to a hotel...

So then maybe a midnight departure HEL to PVG like the current BKK latenighter? Cathay does similar flights LHR to HKG and I've always liked to take them.

Agreed, that could work..AY already has both BKK/HKG departing around midnight so adding PVG could make perfect sense...they cannot build much more to their afternoon Asia wave anyway and a second PVG cannot depart at the same time frame, they need to separate the two..

Most Asian routes require only one aircraft. They leave HEL day 1, arrive in Asia, spend about 2 hours on the ground, fly back to HEL and arrive a couple of hours before their take-off time on day 2 (assuming it's on the same or similar route).

But the midnight departure to Bangkok requires two aircraft: departure HEL at 23:40 on day 1, arrival 10 hours later, 10,5 hours at BKK, a 10,5-hour-flight back to HEL and arrival again at HEL at 6:40 on day 3. In the meanwhile, another plane has left to BKK at 23:40 on day 2.

Doesn't a schedule like this make the route a lot more expensive to operate? Or is the pattern motivated by servicing the planes at BKK, thus cutting costs (when comparing to servicing at HEL)?

I remember their man in PEK saying that AY would had increased flights to PVG/PEK already, if there were slots available. Hopefully it works for them.

It doesn't take 2 planes, it takes a plane and a half. The remaining half is used e.g.during the winter for to those LPA charters that leave HEL early in the morning and come back for the midnight departures.

Besides, if they want to have 2 daily connections, what choice do they have? Unless they can fill the planes with just Finns they need the inbound European feeders, and those come in in two waves, one in the afternoon and one in the night.
Same goes for outbound ones, one wave in the morning and second in the afternoon. AM departure or late night arrival would basically mean no connections.

Yeah, they used to do this a couple of days a week with MD-11s back in the days when the BKK flights continued to SIN/KUL/HKG. Resulting, of course, in all-too frequent delays since the HEL-LPA-HEL requires about 12 hours in the air + an optimistic one-hour layover in LPA.

In my opinion, the pattern would make more sense if they were able to find

a) a sensible continuation point from BKK (I am surprised they haven't)

b) some daily work for the plane ex-HEL during the day

LPA flights operate in the winter months only, and even then they have used wide-bodies only occasionally. I think this season was the first in many years, and only once or perhaps twice a week. That leaves the aircraft idling at least five days a week, and in the summer seven days a week.

Say, they could operate two planes on a daily HEL-BKK-MNL/???-BKK-HEL-LPA/TFS/AGP-HEL rotation, this would make more sense.

Concerning BKK, this is the only destination where they actually can fill the planes with just Finns. As for all other destinations, eg. PVG or PEK, you are quite right. Consequently, I am bewildered that it is BKK where they operate this pattern, because here it makes the least sense.

But I'm sure they've got people at AY doing the math, and if it's worth it using two wide bodies on a single daily to BKK, then so be it.

The problem is that intra-Asian flights are really hard for any non-Asian carrier...too much competition with different cost base / better schedules / loyal business clientele etc.

If I remember correctly AY told couple of years ago that they will only look for non-stop (Asian) routes in the future.

For intra-Asian travel I really enjoyed when AY still had those HKG/SIN-BKK flights, service was usually extremely nice with empty-half empty J cabins...no wonder they didn't make any money with those hops..for pure to/from HEL travel the BKK stops were not that great, of course..

As said, intra-Asia is not an easy business, plus that kind of rotation is really what would push the punctuality, if you're already worried about the LPA gig.
Now if the plane comes late from LPA, it will delay the outbound leg HEL to e.g. BKK, but the plane will most probably catch the schedule during the layover in BKK, and hence only one flight is really delayed.
If there were a tail from BKK onwards that would fill the gap there, then the late arrival could delay that, which could delay the return to HEL which could delay...
A little more serious delay at any point could mean either running behind schedule for days, or cancelling a flight to catch up.

Delays always happen, no matter how your schedule is, so I think the key to punctuality is not just avoiding single delays, that's impossible, but being able to break the cycle.

Plus, the aircraft is not really idling all the times is not in the air. They do have to maintain them as well, and its not like it's the same individual who's doing the same route every day. There's no time to maintain the planes in the 24h rotation, so you need rotations with more time in between as well.
Basically what I'm saying in that you cannot look at just one route, but you have to figure out the whole rotation of plane between all the routes, factor in maintenance and preferably have some looses rotations that you can use for a delayed bird to catch up and break the cycle (we've all learned what happens if you don't do that).
I'm a little skeptic about filling a second plane with Finns, even to BKK. I don't think holidaymakers alone will do the trick, at least _profitably_ filling the plane.
It's easy to get a good price per ticket and it's easy to fill a plane, but doing both at the same time is the tricky part.

Well said!

For AY, probably the only intra-Asian connection that might presently be profitable would be PVG - HKT (Phuket) with all those Scandinavian well earning expat families in Shanghai and surroundings vacationing in Thailand.

Source for this?

Would that be A330 or A340 flights - or both?

If AY can fill these flights with Finns, why do they offer BKK as the cheaper connection point for SYD rather than HKG or SIN (going fwd)?

BD

How about common sense and experiences looking/hearing around while onboard Finnair?