It is important to maintain air connections to the provinces both for the sake of companies and the future electronic aircraft fleet, Minister of Transport and Communications Timo Harakka tells HS.
Minister of Transport Timo Magpie (sd) defends state support for air traffic to provincial cities.
“It is important that the connections are maintained despite the fact that the number of passengers has decreased due to the corona,” he tells HS.
There was a discussion about flights when Finavian manager of the airport network Jani Jolkkonen criticize on Friday, regional flights supported by state funds. According to him, they are expensive, ineffective and cause unnecessary emissions.
As a purchasing service, the state maintains routes from Helsinki to five Finnish airports, whose commercial flights Finnair stopped due to the corona pandemic in March last year. Purchase flights have now been flown for more than a year to Joensuu, Jyväskylä, Kokkola-Pietarsaari, Kemi-Tornio and Kajaani airports.
So far, the state has supported these flight routes launched during the corona pandemic with 40 million euros. Before the pandemic, there was shopping traffic in Finland also on the routes to Savonlinna and Pori.
Read more: The director of Finavia criticizes regional flights, which have already been supported by tax funds with 40 million euros: “Even empty planes have flown on some routes”
Financial support for regional flights flows through at least two different routes: direct support for flights and indirect support for airports. Field maintenance is paid for by Finavia, which is fully owned by the state.
A large part of the provincial courts have been loss-making even before the corona pandemic. The number of passengers has also been declining at many airports for a long time.
Even before 2015, Finavia has located the operations of loss-making regional fields in Helsinki-Vantaa with revenues of approximately 20 million euros annually. The matter is clear from the air transport strategy of the Ministry of Transport and Communications published in 2015 from the report.
At that time, Finavia estimated that the need for cross-financing would increase to 35–40 million euros by 2020. The prediction seems to have come true, as last year the company’s regional airports lost a total of around 40 million euros.
Although Finavia is a state-owned company, these losses do not appear in the state budgets. This is because Finavia’s airport network is considered as a whole, which means that unprofitable airports can be supported with profits available elsewhere within the company.
Finavian Jolkkonen has suggested that instead of subsidizing regional flights, the money could be used for comprehensive development of transport systems, combining different modes of transport.
So is it reasonable to continue to sink tens of millions of euros of state money into loss-making provincial airports and flights, both within Finavia and through state purchase flights?
Minister Harakka does not comment on Finavia’s internal financial affairs. According to him, state-subsidized shopping flights have been resorted to on five routes precisely because of the pandemic, when the number of passengers has decreased significantly.
“Corona has caused this hopefully one-time need for support in all modes of transport, which will disappear when the situation is no longer so acute,” says Harakka.
According to him, regional flights “definitely have the prerequisites” for market-based profitable traffic at the latest at the point when it is planned to introduce cost-effective electric aircraft within this decade.
“That’s why Finavia also has to make sure that the provincial fields are in such condition that they can be flown profitably.”
in Finland Finavia maintains a total of 20 fields around Finland, while Swedavi operates only ten in Sweden, which has a larger area.
Even though Finland’s provincial airports are not comparable to each other, according to Haraka, it is very important for many of them to maintain air connections, even from the point of view of companies. According to him, there are industrially and regionally important places in Finland that are very difficult to reach.
Magpie gives Kajaani, for example. The most powerful in Europe was recently inaugurated there Super computerwhich was successfully financed and built in the midst of a pandemic.
“It’s hard to imagine that representatives of the partner states, the commission’s management and commercial operators would first fly from their home country to Helsinki and then drive all day by train or bus to the provinces just for the joy of being able to invest hundreds of millions in Finland,” he states.
Magpie also calls for Finnair’s responsibility in organizing domestic flights. When the company stopped flights to five provincial airports, the bill for purchase flights was ultimately left to the taxpayers.
However, according to Haraka’s view, domestic flights in Finland would be a profitable business in the right way, i.e. with a sufficiently small and economical fleet, which Finnair currently does not have.
“You might as well ask why we have a blue and white airline if it doesn’t take care of the country’s internal accessibility needs,” says Harakka.
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