Some thoughts on Finnair "Asian strategy" in general and in this initial post specifically in relation to the emerging competition.

In may Air China re-opened CPH-PEK. They also serve ARN-PEK, and as a Star member, they codeshare and sells tickets from just about anywhere in SK network in the nordics.

A few tidbits from my and relatives' experiences

A330 with "old" J cabin. But man, how much space they offer! In my case, A330 with front J cabin 3 rows, 6 abreast plus "mini-cabin" with 2 rows.
So 30 seats in the same space AY had 42 (in the old A330-config)





If travelling as pair, the "window seat without aisle access" is not a very big problem. But if travelling with infant this config has huge advantages as you can sit on the ottoman and feed your kid. And when kid is sleeping, no issues reaching in and check on then. There is even space for both you and your infant to sleep. On AY new J, it must be a nightmare to travel with infants in J. Where do you tuck them? In the foot well?!?



Food and drinks is not that bad. Full meal service, with PDB+warm nuts, amuse, starter, main, cheese and dessert.
N.b. it is not tray meals, it is plate served to you. Desserts are multiple choice and displayed on cart for you to choose from.
Western food was maybe not elegant, but amuse and starter was easily on par with AY. Main was tasty but just not elegantly done or plated. Cheeses on par with AY, desserts way above.


By the way, there was garlic bread. Finnair dropped it a few years back and there is a fan base that wants it back. I'm a bit torn, but did enjoy it on this flight.




Chinese option was excellent and - get this - catered from Copenhagen. They clearly can get great catering at outstations, compared to Finnair that often has mediocre catering on the homebound flights.

Air China also gladly offered dine-on-demand. Yes, I know Finnair technically does so too, but CA did it so much better. They offered up-fron and then did full service (including displaying full selection of desserts on demand) with joy.

Despite me thinking the serice wasn't very polished, comments from my chinese entourage was "You just can't get this kind of service on Finnair. They just throw out the meals and are gone"

As for drinks, I wasn't in for the alcohol beverages, but noticed that they devoted a section of the menu to teas (much as I have suggested Finnair would do with coffees)

Transfer at PEK is not smooth but not as complicated as one would think. The main issue is that is isn't "barrier-free" and that distances are longer. Business-lounge isn't great, typical chinese with only a few snack options and drinks.

Total traveltime was comparable to Finnair, just slightly longer because transfer in PEK cannot be done in 50 minutes.

Price for flight was about half of what Finnair offered. At time of purchase (1,5 month ahead of travel) price was comparable to Finnair economy (!). So despite the "old truth" CPH is an expensive airport, it apparently is not true for all airlines.


Pics of food and menus may (or may not) follow when time and bandwidth allows.

But this begs the question - why should people choose Finnair with a very limited network in China when they can choose a Chinese carrier?

I don't think that nordic customers make up that many in the J cabin going to Asia. There are many connecting from western european countries and many Asians going the other way (the majority in my opinion when you look at the passengers waiting for an AY flight to Tokyo).
As for J cabins being nice when travelling with infants - that's another tiny proportion of passengers and no doubt everyone else in the cabin would prefer the kids left on the other side of the curtain.

Oh, I agree travellers with infants are a very small part of the market. They won't make/break any route. I just wanted to point out that the much hated seat arrangement of "old-j" in A330 has its advatages. BTW, there were at least 3 infants in the 30 seat J cabin on my last flight.

But for an asian strategy to work, you must appeal to the Asians. And Finnair's asian strategy is pretty much a China strategy. At least as it has been outlined as such to investors the last few years. They show a map with a line where AY has the competetive edge north of that line. And it pretty much follows the southern seaboard of China.

So with CA connecting ARN and CPH to all the SK destinations GOT, OSL, MMX, HEL, UME and so on, and offers connections to just about any city in China, then in my mind it must be a threat to that strategy.

Thank you very much for the comparison, interesting read. CA definitely has some good fares to Asia, and actually I just bought a few weeks ago HEL-FRA-PVG-SYD-PEK-ARN-HEL in J for 2200€. This competition is something AY should for sure be watching carefully!

Great post, and let’s hope our friends at AY read it, too! Gives a lot of food for thought, both literally and otherwise.

I wonder to which extent AY is actually geared towards European J customers, Chinese J customers and Chinese Y group customers. If the emphasis is stronly on the latter, then it explains the sometimes modest J performance, eg willingness to invest in catering from (Chinese) outstations etc.

Yeah, even if I fly alone most of the time, I actually enjoy these seats where you don't have to tuck your feet into a tiny footwell. So much more space, and getting up from that seat to stretch your legs is so much easier.

In Y.

Count me in the fan base! I actually mentioned this at the AY kitchen event. I still haven’t given up hopes to see it back one day.

The only thing preventing AY from getting good catering from outstations is money. And if there are real issues, they can always cater at HEL both ways.

”Due to feedback from our most valuable customers, we want to ensure a quiet cabin environment giving you the chance to sleep all afternoon. Therefore, please appreciate that our cabin crew is here primarily for your safety, and to serve you two hours after take-off and 90 minutes before landing…”

To be honest, though, they aren’t that bad. In J, I use the call button if I want something, and they’ll appear if not in a QR-second, then in a AY-five-minutes.

This is actually pretty revealing. If AY gets away with charging such prices, then clearly they are doing something right (since people want to fly them), or someone/everyone else is doing something wrong, or people have strong prejudices against AY’s competitors and don’t even check their prices.

Not directly, as AY offers a one-stop as opposed to CA's two-stop, so if time is an issue, AY still wins. While they don�t fly to just about any city in China (yet), they offer quite a lot of alternatives.

This is definitely a bargain! And might attract leisure pax who want to fly J and don�t care about flight time. But again, for J pax on company money, it probably doesn�t make sense to have them fly two stops and 11343 mi instead of one stop and 9578 mi (via BKK).

Investor presentation talks about both chinese Y and J, but I believe they are having difficulties attracting J and thus are focusing on Y.

I guess so. If you are forced to hold baby on lap the entire journey anyway, then J is pretty wasted on you.



That's the thing - you can get service anytime but you need to know about it and ask for it. Plus the language barrier. AY has maybe 1 mandarin speaker in J cabin, of the total 2-4 CA serving the cabin.

It took pretty long time for service to start on CA too, on par or even worse than AY. Drink service was out of phase with meal service (just like I remeber AY used to be a few years back), ie no drinks during meal. Like I said, I didn't find the service very polished, but the mandarin speakers around me felt they got really good service. At times we felt swarmed by attendants (the 3 infants in the mini-cabin kindergarten surely was a magnet on the younger staff)



indeed.
First plan was to use Finnair upgrades, but with Y pricing above 1000€ (IIRC close to 1100€) I didn't even bother start looking for F space. The 1500€ CA J-ticket was in this sense affordable even for a larger entourage.

What AY "does right" ex-CPH is that they are cheaper than the main competitor in the eyes of the local market. SK, with directs to HKG and TYO, charges ≈3500€, which makes the AY pricing of ≈2500 "cheap".
This is where brands come in. Locals apparently value the AY brand to 1000€/trip as the 1000€ cheaper CA flight was smack-full of Chinese passengers.




One would think so (and AY marketing touts this) but
a) CA offered me a one-stop where AY offers a very complicated 2-stop. CPH-PEK-CAN on CA vs CPH-HEL-HKG-CAN or via CKG (on separate tickets) or via PEK (which incidentally is on CA the last leg!)
N.b. CAN is no "lower-tier city". It is the third largest city in China in a densly populated region.
Of course for pax outside ARN/CPH it will be 2-stop, but see remark c)

b) CA offered me all segments on wide-body, where as AY offers narrowbody with no proper J. For me personally no problem, but with infant widebody/proper J was heaven sent.

c) Not sure if the few-stops argument is that important to customers. On my row was a Chinese couple flying OSL-CPH-PEK-xxx (secondary-tier city). They didn't seem bothered at all about the 2-stop (except their kid cried a lot on the shorthaul narrowbody due to aggressive pressurization/de-pressurization)

d) I need to check timetable, but it felt time was not a divisive factor. It felt on par with AY, and far quicker than say QR which flies a really long route and has very long stop in DOH on very odd hours.

OTOH the Chinese airlines have still a limited network in Europe. There's huge growth going on in domestic air travel in China and I guess it's a more lucrative market than flights to Europe, as the demand between secondary Chinese cities and Europe still seems to be relatively low. This must change over time and then we will see an influx of Chinese carriers into Europe.

When the Chinese decide to enter the European market seriously, I guess Finnair will have no chance against them. The Chinese have the capability of creating a good product for a competitive price (a bit like the ME3, although the quality is probably not going to be that good), if they wish to do so (as we know from many Chinese airlines, not all companies have decided to take the path of quality, but they can do that if they wish). They will have good connections within China from their hubs due to the strong domestic demand. With the high domestic demand, they will use widebodies also on many of their short flights, so they can have effective aircraft rotations.

Regarding Asian strategy, Japan will probably remain a stronghold for Finnair as long as Russia doesn't provide overflight rights to low-cost carriers. It's too far from the Middle-East for the ME3 to be competitive from Europe, the Japanese carriers do not pose a threat with their pricing or network, and the Japanese seem to be happy to fly a Finnish airline that co-operates with Marimekko.

Japan is a stronghold, but profits are now shared with BA/JL/IB.

Here is the tea section of the menu. I think a nordic airline with asian strategy should have a tea section but could also highlight different coffees. Especially when there is the "fika" concept.

Warm nuts and drinks


Amuse. IIRC a large selection of different amuses came in on trolley and I picked a dumpling which was pretty good. The fried surface was crispy, the bolied parts soft.


Starter, smoked meat and a potatoe sallad. By no means inferior to anything AY offers.


Main, western option 1. Chickenbreast with pumpkin mash (so the trend of serving mash even affects chinese carriers!)
Western option2 was Cod with black bean. Vegetarian option was Tortellini with pumpkin. Chineses option was Beef blakc pepper noodles.


Sallad, typical leaf/tomato sallad. Dressing was served separately (choice of two) by FA.



Dessert/cheese/Fruit - Also came as large selection on trolley. I asked for cheese plate and they actively asked if I didn't want anything else. I choose fruit, there was also a collection of different sweets/cakes like chocolate cake and others.



Cheese up-close

Now I've checked the time-tables and here is the time-comparison.

CA CPH-CAN: 14:40 with 2:20 stop in PEK
AY CPH-CAN (only summer-season): 29:15 (!) with a 18h stop in HEL.

No, I am not joking. This is the best option finnair.com offered me on a few sample searches in may. Either 29:15 or 32:30 travel time.

Finnair.com does not seem to sell any ticket wintertime anymore, neither via HKG nor PEK. If you buy a second ticket yourself then Finnair will ofcourse refuse to check baggage, but you can do CPH-CAN via HKG in 17:55:
CPH-HKG: 12:20
HKG stop 4:30
HKG-CAN 1:05

For those few cities that AY does serve, the comparision is to AY advantage, but not very much. Not sure a 12h travel time versus a 14h travel time would be decisive for most people.

Something is obviously wrong. The flight departs from HEL at 5 PM so obviously you can fly to HEL on the same day rather than the day before as proposed by AY. You get sensible suggestions in the other direction.

An option is to travel overland from CPH to MMX. MMX-CAN has a better schedule, but costs 30% more and some of the suggestions include a BMA-ARN transfer.

I'm just not sure one could/should rely on the published domestic schedules in China when doing comparisons. Chinese domestic flight are notorious for long delays and I try to avoid them whenever possible.

CAN is a weird destination for AY - they seem to think that with HKG across the border CAN is also served with the 2-3 dailies to HKG. Well, it isn't. *Shaking head*

A married segments thing perhaps. Cheaper fares usually dont allow the short connection, and they have yet to file all fares for S19?

Regardless, this is whT they offer.



Wilco, I agree schezuled time isnt tve best comparison due to delay proneness. But the cph-pek lands early in the morning and delays are less severe then
And Im pretty sure there will never be a 18h delay anyway, meaning CA still is quicker than AY

Not directly related to the Chinese discussion, but my question works well enough with the heading of the topic: What is the benefit for AY in this Japanese cartel? They're strong in Japan, the Japanese like AY, AY is able to offer the strangest one-stop connections out there, like VCE-FUK or whatever. What's the point in sharing this revenue with IB who doesn't even fly either to Finland or Japan, or with BA, for whom Japan is no big thing (they're only re-starting KIX this spring, currently TYO is their only Japanese destination)? And JL, shouldn't that be AY's biggest competitor?

Do they reason that with the JV, they can keep prices higher and get more revenue, even if some of it needs to be shared? There's a ton of other, non-JV airlines flying between Europe and Japan, so it really makes no sense to me. Or is it really the other way around; with the cartel, Spain and UK feed more pax to AY than withtout it, IB and BA being so weak in Japan? If yes, then it makes sense for AY.