Finnair starts A350 service

Finnair will tomorrow become the first airline flying to Thailand using the stateof-the-art Airbus A350 jet.

Bangkok will be the second Asian city after Shanghai to be served by the Finnish flag carrier’s newly delivered Airbus widebody aeroplane from its Helsinki hub.

Finnair will use the advanced twinengine aeroplane on one of its two daily Bangkok-Helsinki flights in place of an ageing four-engine A340 jet.

The fuselage and wing structures are made primarily of a carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer.

Deployment of the A350 underscores the importance of the Helsinki-Bangkok route for the airline’s long-haul network, said Chanchai Wangyuenyong, Finnair’s manager for Thailand and Indochina.

Finnair will still use the twin-engine A330 for the other daily service.

Meanwhile, it will continue to use the combination of A330 and A340 aeroplanes on two other Thailand-bound routes.

Those are Helsinki-Phuket, currently three times a week, and Helsinki-Krabi, twice weekly.

Finnair’s next A350 long-haul destinations will be Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore, with regular flights expected to commence gradually from next month.

These other A350 long-haul service rollouts are subject to confirmed delivery dates by France-based aircraft maker Airbus SAS, which has received an order for 19 A350s from Finnair.

The airline has so far taken delivery of two of them, which have also been used on its short-haul European routes since October.

A350 service to Bangkok was postponed from the original date of Dec 5 due to delayed aeroplane delivery, Mr Chanchai said.

The 19 A350s will be systematically introduced over the next eight years as part of a fleet upgrade that will see all seven of its A340s phased out by 2017.