discoseal

Thought this deserved a thread on its own. I was surfing the web and I stumbled upon some MBA thesis about AY's failures in China.

http://publications.theseus.fi/bitst...pdf?sequence=1

It seems about right actually. Both Finnair AND Finland pretty much don't have a following at all in China. Just Japan really. Must be the downside of having never established colonies or being a greater power in Asia.

Having said that, none of this is their fault and I think that they will return and become a much more powerful carrier in both Europe and Asia. It's a nice airline.

nordic

Thanks for the interesting link. I will have to find some time to read it.

intuition

Yes, thanks for posting.

I have just scanned the paper, and so far no revelations. But funny to see today AY just launched a "do you the usual way or the shortest way?", comparing travel distance and miles between different airlines (which was one of the points in the paper analysis).

Thalassa

Thanks, interesting stuff. One clarification, though: the paper is not an MBA thesis, it is a BA thesis. And, judging by a quick look, not a very high quality one as such.

Cheers,
T.

remymartin

Nope, it's an AY thesis!

Thalassa

^^^

SPBanker

intuition

Anyone knows if AY still holds some slot rights at CAN? (Paper mentioning AY kept the "license to fly to CAN 5 weekly")

Anyway, read it all now. I wasn't anything special, but still interesting read.

Wasn't too funny to read the conclusion "AY didn't research and understand GuangDong province well enough." Apparently they flew business class virtually empty, as they failed to understand what type of person from Guang Dong would fly business (and for what money), and also missed the widespread use of assistants and/or travel agents. It looks like they do exactly the same in CKG now.

Also the comment "Finnair’s crew has received complaints from the customers that their customer service skills are not on the bar with other airliners." is sad but nothing new and has been talked about here before. You cannot fly on Asia and offer a business class of semi-decent European standard.

Thalassa

I suppose it depends what routes the passengers are comparing CAN-HEL with. I've flown from CAN to Europe on KL, AF, TK, and CZ. I haven't flown that route on AY but I have flown AY from HKG. I've also flown from HKG on NZ. (All, unfortunately, in Y.)

I would not say AY crews or service were subpar compared to any of these airlines. In fact, I quite liked AY. Sure, AY does not compare favorably with CX, but CX is typically not price competitive.

Cheers,
T.

intuition

In the paper TG and SQ are mentioned as comparisons.

More recently, long after AY's withdrawal from the route, I have flown TK and QR ex-CAN, and I found both to have vastly better service in J than AY offers. (TK is hit&miss though.)

But I think the point of the paper is that an ex-CAN-route has to attract a very special kind of J flyer. Ex-HKG it is easy, as you have so many international businesses with corp travel accounts. Ex-CAN it is not certain business people fly J or that they even fly to Europe that much. For CAN you need pursuade small entreprenours and wealthy leisure travellers to spend personal money on flying business. The former, is suggested in the paper, needed better benefits in the FCP (mistakenly called 'Loyalty program' but it really is a small businesses discount program) and the latter needed more luxury.

The initial scope of the authors task kind of shows the faulty mindset AY had - they asked him to investigate why scandinavian companies in the area didn't fly AY, not to find a local target audience.

discoseal

I don't think I've ever flown into CAN now that I think about it actually. Am I like most people where I often fly into HKG and take a train to the area after meeting the business people who are mostly in HKG?