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Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

October 3rd - How Finnair is dealing with the closed Russian airspace

Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

The Independent

Places & Travel, Leisure, Society & Culture

3.6628 Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2024

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Finnair is an intriguing airline. The national carrier of Finland carved a Nordic niche offering great connections through its Helsinki hub between western Europe, including London Heathrow and Manchester, and east Asia – thanks to a fast track across Siberia. The closure of Russian airspace means it has had to rethink its strategy. I've been talking to Turkka Kuusisto, the new chief executive of Finnair.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

This message is for listeners age 21 and over who use nicotine.

0:03.7

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0:07.0

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0:10.7

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0:14.0

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0:16.5

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0:19.6

a space to be tuned in.

0:21.3

Limited launch offer available at haypp.com.

0:28.2

Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast.

0:31.9

It's Thursday the 3rd of October.

0:34.5

I'm very excited to be at the GERCkin, this amazing office building in the city of London,

0:40.3

overlooking Tower Bridge. But I'm even more excited to be here with Turke Kusista. He is the new,

0:49.3

well, relatively speaking, five months, which probably is about five years in airline world, chief executive

0:55.2

of Finnair. And fascinating story that Finnair has to tell, and I'm sure you as well. So tell me,

1:03.8

what is your mission? My mission is to continue developing this fantastic company with my team and 5,600 colleagues.

1:13.6

Finner is a unique, iconic company, iconic brand, the flagship carrier of Finland,

1:19.6

that has come through difficult times, but we are backing the cruising altitude,

1:24.6

so that's a great foundation to continue the development of our journey.

1:28.3

You're celebrating 70 years of flying to and from London. That seems impossible.

1:33.3

It's been a long way, 70 years flying to Helsinki to London and UK as a total market and especially London heat row

1:41.3

is extremely important route for us. Actually this winter season the biggest single route of Finner in terms of capacity.

1:49.0

One reason for that is I believe you are still operating an Airbus A350 long haul aircraft

...

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