CPH-Flyer

AF is taking a weird detour on that one. And they do it every day. I did not say AY can't I said maybe they do not want to deal with the complexity.

TG677 ended up avoiding China after going over Taiwan. I was talking to an Air Japan pilot on the topic, they have a number of operational restrictions, but if the Japanese carriers have more, or it was all could be open to interpretation. He sated as general affairs

flymetoHEL

AY does the same on flights to HKG. With that detour, seems they cannot turn around in TPE and return to HEL within 24 hours, which has been important for Finnair in their Asia operations.

Does anyone know if a more direct corridor to HKG and TPE exists in the Chinese airspace? Is it only 30% of Chinese airspace, that is available for civil aviation?

CPH-Flyer

Maybe if they went North around China, through Japanese airspace down to Taiwan? Does not seem to be too much of a detour.

OH-LGG

Return in HEL in 24hrs was important back in days when AY had less than 10 wide bodies and 10 long haul destinations.

Now 20 planes in fleet ad more to come giving more flexibility with long haul schedules and 24hrs return not so important.

intuition

Purely guessing, but the detour for this AF is doing indicates that there is no handover between Taiwaneese and Chinese air traffic controller. That seems like a typical thing for CN to do. But if the taiwaneese hands over the aircraft to HK, then all is OK and problem solved. No one loses face.

intuition

I believe it would be very long. Heilongjiang is far north and east. They would have to go almost all the way to Sapporo.

ffay005

I believe that the 24-hour thing is still essential for profitability. And not only does it save capacity, it also enables smooth connections at HEL.

To have a destination with, say, a 28-hour turnaround, would be a lot more costly. Even if you could rotate aircraft so that you can still fly two longhaul legs with every plane within 24 hours, you'd lose those connections.

OH-LGG

Like BKK143/144 and KIX067/068 services are both 30 hrs turnaround and both have and will have smooth connections at HEL

ffay005

I'm glad those flights exist because it creates a lot more leeway at HEL when something goes wrong with one of the widebodies. They have spare planes, so to say, and when the fleet increases, of course the economics of those spares get better. There are probably other factors, too, like slot restrictions and maintenance time. Moreover, this pattern seems to give us some shorthaul flights on widebodies, which is much appreciated.

But I can't help thinking that those "AY143/144 planes" could make 14 weekly roundtrips to BKK instead of only 7.

CPH-Flyer

In this, you are forgetting that they can't fly the direct route to TPE nor HKG, they seemingly need the same detour that AF is taking.

intuition

The direct is just for comparison. The HEL-HKG-TPE (approximation of the AF detour) is 8,5% longer than direct GC route. The northern detour is +25%. Give and take some route anomlies, HKG detour is still considerably shorter.

r2d2

It's effectively a ~40 h rotation as the plane will sit idle in HEL after the arrival before it will go to LHR in the afternoon (starting from March). And there's only a limited number of short-haul routes where widebodies can be deployed cost-effectively, so adding new long-hauls to the midnight-departure / early morning arrival wave will effectively have a 48 hour rotation.

With the A330's getting older I believe AY is going add more of these 48 hour rotations. The capex on the planes is getting so low that it's not a big thing that the planes are idle for 50% of the time. With 8 A330's AY could have 4 of these destinations with daily flights - and if there's demand for more, used A330's can be always leased or bought. Commercially, the departure and arrival times would be good, so I believe AY could support a second daily to many destinations in this bank. With KIX, they are already testing how it would work in the Japanese market. TYO would be a natural move in 2020, when as a part of the Tokyo Olympic Games there will be additional slots in HND and the night curfew in NRT will be shortened.

I don't see more 48 hour rotations happening with the A359's as the lease cost of one plane is around $1M a month. It's just too much to make it profitable.

oliver2002

There are not many routes in south China you are allowed to use for commercial traffic: https://skyvector.com/?ll=25.0697222...art=302&zoom=2

AY doesn't own the A330 anymore, so they have lease payments on them regardless of age. 50% utilization is deathly for any fleet... some places the aircraft of most airlines stays on the ground because an immediate turnaround would mean that it would arrive outside of the waves into the hub and not connect in convenient times. Also some markets won't accept day flights for example.

flymetoHEL

It's not the number of planes but the geographical location that gives Finnair the strategic benefit of a 24 or less hours rotation on Asian routes.
You don't add planes so that they can stay more on the ground if that's what flexibility means here.

Here:

Finnair Strategy

Finnair is the only European airline that can operate flights to most Asian destinations on a 24-hour aircraft rotation, which means that the routes can be operated as round trips within 24 hours at regular times using a single aircraft. This enables a record-high utilisation rate in long-haul traffic, reduces the need for additional crews in compliance with flight time restrictions, and decreases fuel consumption and emissions due to shorter flight times.

ffay005

The A330 48-hour Asian rotation could work out nicely if AY had some sensible use for the planes while they're resting at HEL. We've seen AY add widebody flights to LHR, BRU, AGP and DXB. I believe LHR and BRU are motivated foremost by cargo, and they're business-heavy destinations, so most likely they can fill the J cabin with paying pax. AGP is very occasional (think school holidays) and the few reports I've heard, J stays mostly empty. DXB is probably more related to competing with FlyDubai than anything else.

AY wouldn't have difficulties filling those A330s to the brim to destinations like FCO or BCN in the summer. To some of the popular summer destinations, they fly two narrowbodies within an hour of each other. But these destinations are not J heavy, and to operate a widebody is more costly per pax than a narrowbody. Moreover, two narrowbodies offer more Y capacity than one A330.

If it wasn't for connections, AY could fly daytime to DEL with that "BKK plane". That would surely beat the short redeye flight, but nobody is reaching HEL in time for an 8 am departure to India...