warakorn

At the moment Finnair operates two longhaul waves from its hub in Helsinki.

First Wave (almost all Asia flights plus ORD and MIA):
Flights arrive HEL mid afternoon (around 3pm)
Flights depart HEL late afternoon (around 5pm)

Second Wave (only SIN and HKG):
Flights arrive HEL early morning (around 6am)
Flights depart HEL late at night (around 11pm)

Many European flights connect well to these two waves. AY serves certain key European markets twice a day.

At the moment only HKG and SIN are part of the second wave.
The second daily BKK flight had been moved away from that wave.

The JFK flights cannot be really assigned to one wave in particular.

Do you expect that AY at one point decides to expand the second wave - maybe including the second BKK rotation and CAN to this second wave?
Maybe a HND rotation might come handy in the future.
If AY would ever start TPE, the second wave could be a good contender.

The second wave is ideal for flights which take more than 10 hours, because the 24 hour cycle (that is needed for the first wave) does not work well then.
Moreover, second wave Asia-Europe flights seem to have better yield, because biz travellers do not loose any daytime slots.
And, if you fly out to Asia on the first wave, you have to board a flight in Europe at around noon to connect to that wave at 5pm in HEL. Those travellers loose the entire day anyway.
If, however, the flight to Asia departs HEL at around midnight, these pax only have to board its shorthaul connecting flight in Europe at around 7pm, thus, leaving them almost the entire day.

An expansion of second wave would also better fill the cabins of European flights, which connect to the second wave.
In addition, HEL is bursting at the moment between 3pm and 5pm. Pax arriving from longhaul flights are running to the shorthaul flights and vice versa - all at the same time. AY can never ever provide enough lounge space.

Fleet utilization might suffer of course. However, most big European legacy carrier have to pay that price, thus, AY would be not at competitive disadvantage there.
The only problem is that second wave arriving planes (from Asia at 6am) cannot immediately turn to North America (like 10am), because AY lacks the incoming European feed in the morning. A third 10am wave could be built by providing feed from key core markets (e.g. Finland, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Baltics plus India). AY is never going to get high yield pax from Central Europe for its North American flights anyway. If the North American flights depart around 10am, they could be back in HEL at 6am the next day, thus, they would feed the second wave (with flights arriving at HEL around 6am from SIN and HKG).

Courmisch

This was already mentioned but your dear friend Mr. Vauramo indicated that the number of waves would increase in the next decade.

I don't really see why CAN would fit in a second wave, at least not any better than the rest. The SIN and the daily HKG services require two planes instead of one. This is unavoidable for SIN due to distance and flight time - but not the other destinations. In fact, the extra summer HKG service was a 24h return with the main Asian wave - just like the restored CAN service (that apparently replaced it).

Courmisch

I cannot see very many ways out of the conumdrum. Most European destinations would probably not sustain a third daily return, and it would probably require too many new planes as well.

If there was an easy solution, I think it would already be in use, given how overcrowded HEL is getting during The Big Afternoon Wave.

One potential solution is to fly some of the wide-bodies intra-Europe on the busiest routes (e.g. LHR, CDG), as is already done when cargo requires it. That keeps the planes busy in Europe by day. To keep the planes busy in Asia, fifth freedom flights would be required. I don't have a clue how viable that would be politically and economically (I am told Finnair used to operate fifth Freedom in South-East Asia).

warakorn

Why two planes for SIN and just one plane for (e.g.) PVG?
Isnt it more like 1.6 planes for SIN?
And 1.3 planes for PVG?

e.g. 5 planes are needed to cover a daily rotation to JFK, PVG and HKG.

Monday:
HEL-

Tuesday:
-HKG

Wednesday:
HKG-HEL
HEL-JFK
JFK-

Thursday:
-HEL
HEL-

Friday:
-PVG
PVG-HEL
HEL-

Saturday:
-HKG

Sunday:
HKG-HEL
HEL-JFK
JFK-

...

But two daily rotations to European destinations is enough to feed the two waves.

This is the scheme:

First Rotation:
8am (Second Longhaul Wave Arrival) - HEL - Europe
12pm Europe - HEL - (First Longhaul Wave Departure)

Second Rotation:
5pm (First Longhaul Wave Arrival) - HEL - Europe
7pm Europe - HEL - (Second Longhaul Wave Departure)

Core markets like CPH, ARN, OSL, DME, LED, TLL, OUL may already have three flights a day.

A 24-hour rotation to CAN is quite tight.
CAN would actually require more block time than HKG, because CAN is more prone to local air traffic flow restrictions.
HKG inbound and outbound traffic has some more leeway to avoid Mainland China airspace over the South China Sea. It has been my experience that international/Macao/HK/Taiwan traffic into Mainland China airspace is prioritized somewhat.
If the military restricts the flow north or south of CAN, the airlines in CAN are screwed. The Chinese airline actually extend the published flight schedule time by 30-60 minutes to account for these flow restrictions.

CAN only works today, because it is not daily and is integrated with another rotation, which has shorter block times (e.g. ICN).

intuition

I don't have something very clever to say about this, other than the banks are working pretty OK as is, apart from HEL capacity. And HEL is growing the capacity, so as far as I can tell, they could stay with current afternoon wave even with several new destinations.

I personally would like to see many more flights in the late night wave though, just because I'd like to have full workday before I need to leave.
But that would re-time everything, arriving in Asia noon instead of early morning and depart efternoon or evening. Some of those flight would allow for same night connection to Europe, but in some cases this would force an overnight in HEL. (Big no-no)

UNLESS Finnair would consider flying to European destinations late night, leave the aircraft in Europe overnight and return to HEL in the morning. Ie flip the schedule, making first flight of the day be the inbound. That would be the best ever solution for non-finns. But a very unlikely development for obvious reasons.

warakorn

The second wave connect perfectly with the AY European network.
A midnight departure from HEL allows for European flights to arrive at 10pm or 11pm.
A 6am arrival into HEL allows for European flights leaving HEL at 7am or 8am.

intuition

Explain how that would work for NRT, for instance. I've added 5 hours to exsisting schedule:

Leave HEL 23:15, arrive NRT 13:55. Leave NRT 16:00, arrive HEL 20:20.

Connect to where at 20:20 ?!?!

warakorn

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warakorn

NRT and Japan in general is not well suited for the second wave, because of the large time zone difference and the relative short distance.
Moreover, many big European airlines do not offer overnight westbound services between Japan and Europe at all.
In general I do not think that Finnair should move North Asia flights to the second wave.

Today this is the schedule:
HEL 1715 NRT 0855
NRT 1100 HEL 1520

A second wave schedule would like that:

HEL 2355 NRT 1540
NRT 0050 HEL 0510

It has the same fleet utilization like SIN or HKG.

intuition

Well, almost all AY destinations have that type of "short" distance.

Here are the return time for vital destinations. Notice how most of them are within the span of 20-22 hours. (By return time I mean the time it takes to fly to destination, turn around and fly back to HEL. Turnaround at HEL is not inside this meassure.)

lkrt

The same fleet utilization that is very bad. At least they do maintenance to the aircraft every now and then at SIN/HKG but there's really no use keeping the aircraft on the ground at NRT.

justforfun

I just wish I could do BKK-HEL-JFK without having to overnight in HEL.

intuition

And that would be very wasteful and IMO will never ever happen.

And I can't see AY getting into new destinations that would force this type of rotation unless there is another big gain. (For HKG and SIN cargo is picking up the bill, that's my guess).

So the question was - is second wave expanding? I'd love for that to happen, but I can't see any of todays destination getting such a retime and I can't imagine what new destination that would fit.

Maybe I'm just thick headed, though!

Courmisch

With the current one big bank and two half-banks, connections are impossible either in or out. Adding a third daily rotation for the narrow bodies seems very unlikely: the timing would be horrible, and it would be incompatible with the curfews in many European airports.

So yeah, one option would be swap the directions of the typical double daily services (assuming CET and max 3h flights):
- xxx 6:00 - HEL 10:00
- HEL 12:00 - xxx 14:00
- xxx 15:00 - HEL 19:00
- HEL 21:00 - xxx 23:00
That would leave two completely separate waves for connections: noon and 9pm.

That looks like a horrible schedule both for Europe-bound Finns and for Finland-bound Europeans though. A certain major Finnair stakeholder might not appreciate. The Asian flights leaving in the first wave would arrive in the middle of the night, which might be even worse.

ffay005

JFK, together with the former AA service to ORD, forms a wave on its own. There are feeder flights to and from the Nordics, the Baltics and Russia. WAW used to be included, too.