longliveKA

Read somewhere that AY might fly to TPE soon, direct? tag to HKG?
Any confirmation on this?
Cheers!

intuition

No confirmation AFAIK, just rumours. TPE is certainly one of the possible cities for AY expansion (under the 24h rotation paradigm) but with partner CX already serving TPE and with very few other connection from TPE my guess would be that some secondary city in PRC is more likely as new destinations.

Personally, I'd love to se TPE added though.

intuition

Everything north of the red line is possible for Finnair to serve with one airplane individual. They can fly to destination, turn-around, return to HEL and do the home station turnaround within 24 hours - hence 24 h rotation - and this is highly valued since that means planes are in the air, making money, most of the time.

Do note that Taiwan is no longer marked with green ("Strategic focus markets"). In other presentations TPE has been marked as a possible destination, but in this slide show (may 2016) it is not. That might not mean anything in reality - could have been removed for political reasons.

Courmisch

Can they actually go from HEL to TPE and back in less than 24h including HEL tarmac time? IIUC, they'd need to fly over HKG and then turn over the straight. That would imply about 2.5-3h longer travel time than HEL-HKG-HEL.

intuition

Why is that?

Anyway, HEL-HKG-TPE is only 421 miles longer that HEL-TPE. That can't be 2-3h more flying. And then a HEL-ICN-TPE route is shorter, adds 348 miles.

intuition

BTW, The specified full service turn round time for A359 is 61 minutes. The transit turn round time is 30 minutes. So technically a 24h rotation allows "flying" (block time) of up to 22h 29m.


And they don't need to keep every destination within 24h. Since there are some short longhauls, you can alter one plane between a say 25h rotation and a 18h rotation destination.

Andaman

TPE would be cool but perhaps PUS (Busan) comes before that? Last year Korean media reported Finnair has serious plans to commence direct flights to PUS.

http://busanhaps.com/direct-route-be...-in-the-works/

What I've heard Finnair wasn't completely happy with the facilities and infrastructure at the airport, like the hydrant fueling system that will not be ready until 2017 at the earliest.

ORD Finn

I am not 100% sure but I think you cannot enter mainland China airspace at all on a direct route to TPE. So the route from HEL would go to Japan and then continue south. The flight time e.g. to KIX is 9+ hrs and then it is another ca. 2 hrs to TPE. So HEL-TPE would be at least 11 hrs flight and coming back is slower. The actual durations of BR TPE-CDG flights seem to be around 13 hrs. That makes 24 hr rotation quite difficult if not impossible.

Also I am a bit dubious if TPE would be a big enough market to support the route. Personally would love to have that route, though.

deissi

This is how KL flies from AMS to TPE:

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/f.../kl807#9dae306

Steve_Hun

I have two quick questions (probably with obvious answers for everyone else), hope you might be able to answer them.

1, Looks like that HKG is well within the 24 hr return zone. How come it operates with 2 planes then?

2, What does JB stands for?

intuition

That is indeed over HKG. But the flight still enters Chinese airspace, so there must be a more complex sitatuation governing TPE-flights. Anyway, Finnair would be better off selecting a northern route, perhaps over Korea. In the end it might be too complicated though, and if competition and not much O/D demand then it isn't a top priority.

1 - I assume it is due to the slots. Midnight departure from HKG means the aircraft returns to HEL in the morning, and due to the wave-paradigm, there is nothing for it to do upon arriving.
(Cargo uses these planes though, that is why we see wide bodies going to EU destinations. )
2 - Joint Business

Steve_Hun

Thanks, that explains it...

S#it... Should have figured that out myself

warakorn

Could we please correct this myth that any route (over 24 hour rotation) requires two planes.
It is simply not true.
In terms of aircraft scheduling, a route like HEL-PEK-HEL takes like 30 hours (hence 1.3 planes are needed); a route like HEL-HKG-HEL takes like 39 hours (hence 1.7 planes are needed). You need to include maintenance, ATC delays (common for PEK) and turnarounds to other routes (the HKG/SIN/JFK rotations at one point turn to the PEK/ICN/NRT/PVG rotations).

The 24 h rotation is not so much about aircraft utilization. It is more about hub connectivity.
With a (less than) 24 rotation, AY can offer its pax perfect connections between shorthaul European and longhaul flights. It all comes down to the 3pm - 5pm timeslot at HEL.

I do not think that longhaul aircraft utilization is extremely higher at AY than its European counterparts (LH, AF, KL etc.).

Lets have a look at the HEL departure board:



I can count 11 AY-operated longhaul departures during the HEL 5pm longhaul departure wave.

Outside of this wave we have an almost daily JFK/HKG/SIN departure.
DEL/MIA have around 3-4 departures a week outside this wave.

AY has 18 longhaul planes (8x333, 5x343, 5x359).

OH-LGG

3x343

MIA is in wave too when operated: 16:50

ORD Finn

Hmm, they do seem to fly across China indeed. I wasn't aware of KLM flying to TPE. I thought only the Taiwanese carriers fly between Taipei and Europe and seems like they are still not allowed in the mainland airspace on these routes. But we can see also see that even if you can fly over China the paths are not the most straightforward which means waste of time and fuel.