coolburning

As I type this post, I want to vent out and reflect on my thoughts about the flight between Helsinki and Gothenburg with ATR72.
It has been a while now that all flights between these two cities are operated with the smallest type in the AY fleet.
I would not complain if the ticket price is relatively in a good range.
However, we already paid a high price of over 20k SEK for any business class to any intercontinental destinations.
But the feeder flight is operated with uncomfortable seats for a longer flight time with close to no service since it is all Economy class.

I wonder when AY would consider or come back to its senses to operate with larger aircraft like E190.
At least the feeder flights to other long-haul flights to Asia or USA.

Maybe I am tired from the trip, but I wish I could get the service I paid for.
I hope that my message will echo to AY at some point.

ffay005

How full was your flight? Unfortunately, I believe AY will go for the smallest possible plane type, so unless there is demand for more, I can't see this changing.

They will need a few ATRs for their domestic operations later this autumn, but I have no idea whether there is a surplus. With some good luck, perhaps they don't have enough ATRs and will send E90s to GOT then?

coolburning

Both flights to and from HEL were full. I have no idea about other flights though.

To me, ATR is good for domestic flights, and it will be better to have E190 for regional flights. I am surprised that they also plan to use ATR through next summer.

florens

Next summer is far away and plans can and likely will change.

miamiflyer8

While on the topic, I was planning to go to GOT to see a friend later this month during my trip to Europe (hint: I picked SQ instead of AY for the TATL portion given AY’s soft product…) and then go to Finland. I ended up scrapping that plan as the GOT schedule is abysmal, flights are either too early or too late for my schedule and add insult to injury it’s ATR operated.

SAN_Finn

Just got off from Atr from GOT. I tend to agree that this flights is a little long for ATR. I disagree on the schedule though, I think early morning and late evening times are perfect.

getting soaked by rain boarding is another part that sucks about these things.

intuition

Using ATR on the GOT route says something about AY strategy to me. It seems they are reluctant to fly even with a little over-capacity (where active revenue-management would add more customers at different pricepoints and increase overall yield). Instead they rather fly with the lowest possible capacity and prefer having fewer customers and higher prices.

If this really is their underlying strategy, the insane pricing will remain as long as there is demand to fly low quality while paying first class prices. If some 60 pax is happy to pay several 100's of € for a intra-nordic flight on ATR, then sure why wouldn't Finnair offer that? Perhaps they don't need the extra capacity (+30) that E90 would provide, as they believe it will actually bring in less cash.

With Norwegian refocusing on shorthaul, one can hope they also want to serve the intra-nordic market and in a point-to-point way. Maybe GOT isn't the first choice (currently they only do tourist routes from there) but I think having options really is what is needed. I'm hoping it would return us to a situation with more normal pricing and where airlines will be forced to diffentiate themselves from the competition (in more positive ways than having high prices and low service)

ffay005

Norwegian just cut HEL-OUL. I doubt they will fly HEL-GOT anytime soon. The market just isn't there (especially if it isn't there for HEL-OUL).

And without the Sino-Japanese strategy, I doubt AY finds enough demand from GOT (or virtually any other secondary city in Europe, for that matter).

GOTBound

For the winter schedule, some morning and evening flights during weekends GOT-HEL, HEL-GOT are scheduled with a mix of E190 and A319.
On a side note, my experience for my GOT-HEL and HEL-GOT flights this year on the ATR-72 have been more or less full, however day of week and time of day have most likely played a vital factor as well.