In 2002 Finnair carried on its Asian flights over 100,000 passengers (38.3%) more than year before. Total passenger number covering all traffic categories fell, however, by a half million passengers, a half of which in domestic traffic. Out of all revenues, the share of the Asian traffic has climbed up to 17%, while that of domestic traffic is 23%.

For the whole year 2002 ASK’s reduced by 3.7% with RPK’s rising by 0.1%. This resulted in a 2.7 points increase in passenger load factor to 71.9%. Total number of passengers carried was 7,036,500 (-6.6% over year 2001).

In December Finnair carried a total of 513,800 passengers (+0.0%), 417,100 of these in scheduled traffic (-1.6%) and 96,600 in leisure traffic (+7.2%). With 10.4% more capacity and 9.6% more traffic (RPK), passenger load factor was 72.5%, 0.5 points lower than last year.

Departure punctuality of scheduled flights was 85.8% (based on a fifteen minute standard), 9.8 percentage units higher than in December 2001. Including leisure flights departure punctuality was 84.9% (+9.8 p.u).

Scheduled traffic: RPKs in scheduled traffic (international + domestic) increased by 9.3%. Respectively the change in capacity was +9.6%. Passenger load factor was 62.3%, 0.2 percentage points lower than last year.

In scheduled international traffic, premium traffic increased by 2.9%, while the total number of passengers was up by 0.3%. Capacity in ASKs was +12.7%, and RPK increase +12.2%. The change in premium traffic was affected by the transfer of Helsinki-Tallinn operations to Finnair subsidiary Aero Airlines since June 1st. The adjusted change-% is +9.5%.

In European scheduled traffic, increase in ASKs was +1.4%, and as RPKs increased by 1.0%, there was a -0.2 p.u. decrease in passenger load factor to 55.5% from previous year.

In North Atlantic scheduled traffic, capacity was increased by 15.2%. Change in RPKs was +7.4%, and passenger load factor for December was 67.8%, 4.9 p.u. down from previous year. Premium traffic increased by 21.9%.

In Far East scheduled traffic, capacity increase was 36.3%. The passenger traffic increased by 31.3%. Passenger load factor was 75.3%, 2.9 percentage units down. The number of premium passengers increased by 63.1%.

Domestic scheduled traffic decreased by 4.4% on a capacity decrease of 3.5%. Passenger load factor decreased by 0.5 p.u. to 56.0%.

Leisure traffic: ASKs for leisure traffic was increased in December by 11.8%, and RPKs increased accordingly by 9.9%, resulting in a passenger load factor of 91.2%, 1.6 points lower than previous year.

Cargo: Cargo traffic increased by 7.5% in terms of cargo tonnes carried. Cargo and mail tonnes increased by 13.4%. The strongest increase took place in the Asian traffic, 41,0%. Load factor on chartered cargo flights was 66,0%. The decrease was because of lowered demand during the last weekend of the year.

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