| Update: Finnair has just loaded award availability on this route. There seem to be two to four business class award seats per flight. This is an excellent opportunity, since Finnair awards can be booked using American AAdvantage miles without fuel surcharges. You can find the original post from November 9 below. |
Finnair has just announced its newest destination in the United States, and it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.
In this post:
Finnair launching Dallas flights in February 2022
As of February 6, 2022, Finnair will be launching a 4x weekly Helsinki (HEL) to Dallas (DFW) route. The flight will operate with the following schedule, and is already bookable:
AY19 Helsinki to Dallas departing 4:00PM arriving 6:50PM
AY20 Dallas to Helsinki departing 8:40PM arriving 2:55PM (+1 day)
The service will operate in both directions on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. The flight will cover a distance of 5,224 miles in each direction, and is blocked at 10hr50min westbound and 10hr15min eastbound.
Finnair will use an Airbus A350-900 for the Dallas service, specifically the configuration that’s more premium heavy. The plane features 297 seats, including 46 business class seats, 43 extra legroom economy seats, and 208 economy seats. Finnair has a solid business class product, with reverse herringbone seats.
How this fits into Finnair’s route network
Finnair’s new Helsinki to Dallas flight is clearly about connectivity. Finnair is part of the oneworld transatlantic joint venture, which otherwise includes American, British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus. The airlines share revenue across the Atlantic, and this flight opens up all kinds of connectivity opportunities beyond both Helsinki and Dallas.
Interestingly this announcement of Finnair’s new route to Dallas comes just a day after Iberia announced plans to launch a Madrid to Dallas route. Finnair’s route network to the United States out of Helsinki otherwise includes Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York.
Finnair has really had to rethink its route network during the pandemic. Historically Finnair’s biggest long haul market was China, and China continues to remain closed, and there’s no indication that will change anytime soon (or maybe even ever).
Finnair has gotten creative — the airline recently launched long haul flights from Stockholm, including to Los Angeles, Miami, and New York. Obviously the airline saw demand for long haul flights from Sweden, and with so many spare long haul aircraft, it seemed worth trying.
I’m curious to see if the Sweden long haul service lasts in the long run, or if this is just temporary until more destinations reopen.
Bottom line
Finnair will be launching a new 4x weekly service between Helsinki and Dallas as of February 2022. This will complement Finnair’s flights from Helsinki to Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York.
This route doesn’t come as much of a surprise, and for that matter comes on the heels of Iberia announcing a new route from Madrid to Dallas. These flights are designed around connectivity, given just how many destinations American serves out of Dallas.
What do you make of Finnair’s new route to Dallas?
Figure, because of how the airlines lost billions during the pandemic, the airports are about to change forever. Seems that DFW airport benefitted more from the crisis than any other airport.
Very nice news, my flight with only one stop to Helsinki rather than two. Thank you Finnair.
I understand that DFW is an important hub for AA with great connectivity, as well as also a center of the oil industry. However, the only Scandinavian country with a meaningful oil industry is Norway and, yes, the connections do work there, at least to Oslo (AY does not serve SVG, which is where the main parts of the norwegian oil industry is based). Also connections to to central Europe do not work - but...
I understand that DFW is an important hub for AA with great connectivity, as well as also a center of the oil industry. However, the only Scandinavian country with a meaningful oil industry is Norway and, yes, the connections do work there, at least to Oslo (AY does not serve SVG, which is where the main parts of the norwegian oil industry is based). Also connections to to central Europe do not work - but it would anyway be a significant detour for them to fly via HEL.
Therefore I'm wondering, why Finnair is not trying anything on the West Coast. Flying via Helsinki is much less of a detour and for instance the AS hub in Seattle is not well served from Europe.
It is going to be interesting the new steps airports and airlines are going to take in order to avoid losing even more billions during the next round of a pandemic. Be prepared to toss all the former rules and policies of doing business out the window. Both the location and the design of DFW helped the airport rise in prominence.
For most summer dates that I scanned, the schedule is different than that listed above.
AY20 (DFW->HEL) is 16:55-11:10
AY19 (HEL->DFW) is 12:25-15:05
Great redemption value - business fares are $7k+.
I for one - have been flying DFW to HEL for years, several times per year. Usually via LHR or ORD - I am sure that Finnair has seen Dallas as a major business hub and TX is growing. Samsung's chip plant announcement today proves it.
Based out of Tulsa, it gives us great flexibility than connecting out of ORD all the time. Looking forward to it!!
So happy to know about it .Now we dont have to catch connecting flights and will save some hours.
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AY for the last couple of years been very mean with partner award availability (like none), particularly on TYO-HEL routes. I notice that now they are moving to full schedule this has changed and there is now quite good availability. I guess their flights are far from full right now with Business otherwise near empty, so it makes sense to open up a few award seats while demand is soft.
Get it while you can, as this generousity won't last!
On top of the OW connection possibilities, Dallas' NHL team has lots of Finnish players. Must be convenient for Heiskanen or Hintz to have a direct flight home if need be lol.
Correction about Finnair's destinations in the US: Does Finnair not fly to San Francisco at all anymore? I recall that until the pandemic, they flew a summer seasonal flight there using the A330-300 (AY 11/12 HEL-SFO-HEL). It's great for Dallas that they get an A350-900 with this new flight, and at the same time Chicago is going year-round, but as someone from the Bay Area, it's hard not to feel disappointed. I guess San Francisco...
Correction about Finnair's destinations in the US: Does Finnair not fly to San Francisco at all anymore? I recall that until the pandemic, they flew a summer seasonal flight there using the A330-300 (AY 11/12 HEL-SFO-HEL). It's great for Dallas that they get an A350-900 with this new flight, and at the same time Chicago is going year-round, but as someone from the Bay Area, it's hard not to feel disappointed. I guess San Francisco was never really that important of a destination for Finnair anyway. I'm actually quite surprised because they partner with Alaska, who has a moderately sized operation at SFO, and while it's not nearly as big as the big dog United, SFO seems to get an amazingly strong variety of carriers outside Star Allilance, compared to places like EWR, DEN, or IAH. It's crazy how not too long ago, Finnair's only West Coast destination was SFO, and now look where they are, launching A350-900 flights from LA to Helsinki and now Stockholm, effectively leaving their SFO operation in the dust.
I dont think there's anything to feel bad about. They'll probably be back again some day. San Francisco is a huge market - both for visitors and for people from the Bay Area going on trips. Especially in the summer. Covid has just ended and it'll take a bit longer for everything to be restored. It's nothing to be sad about - or get upset about. Every airline does not have enough planes to fly...
I dont think there's anything to feel bad about. They'll probably be back again some day. San Francisco is a huge market - both for visitors and for people from the Bay Area going on trips. Especially in the summer. Covid has just ended and it'll take a bit longer for everything to be restored. It's nothing to be sad about - or get upset about. Every airline does not have enough planes to fly everywhere. And if connections are what Finnair cares about, Finnair, due to its revenue share agreement with American, keeps more money from connecting people to American than it does feeding people to Alaska. Either way connectivity at San Francisco is not what Finnair needs to be successful. It just thinks that for the time being it will make more money in American hubs, and Finnair, which is a public company, has the responsibility to make as much money as it can for its shareholders with its limited resources as possible. Nothing to get personally upset about.
Actually by number of passengers, Japan has so far been a bigger long-haul market than China for Finnair.
Japan is also closed for the foreseeable future.
Very nice! Just did HEL-DXB-HEL last week and the new / renovated non-Schengen area is stunning at the airport, the new main entrance will open in December and new other areas for check-in and security will be open in a few months. Really enjoying the prospect of flying more direct long-hauls from HEL.
Unfortunately the Schengen areas of HEL will be still under renovation for a year or two so all the pain is not gone..
OneWorld really seems to be doubling down on DFW with both Finnair and Iberia announcing HEL DFW and MAD DFW.
If they'd have routed to Austin they could have connected (backtracked) to Puerto Rico on AA's 11:40 PM departure (AA 2914). :)
Why would they do that when they can easily connect to San Juan through Miami?
Always avoid international connections in the US as there’s no airside sterile transit. You have to clear immigration and customs , and meet US travel restrictions/ requirements. From Helsinki you’re always best flying via a European hub
This is exciting! I'll be booking this as soon as there is award availability! Love DFW airport too, one of the best in the country.
There's not a lot of great connectivity at DFW with this, when it arrives at 6:50PM. No Cancun, Mexico city, Puerto Vallarta/ beach traffic, which you'd think would be a driver of this in the cold winter months. I think it'll be fine in summer but February and winter months will be tough with no connectivity to warm beach climates for european customers.
You're 100% right. Arrival in DFW at 1850 doesn't make any sense, add on top of it 2 hours to clear immigration & customs and connections are even more limited. OTOH, this flight can't be going after connecting traffic out of HEL, europeans (expect for Russia, Scandinavia and former USSR) won't backtrack to get to DFW
Horrible scheduling by AY in my opinion.
Well, connecting through the US to Mexico (or Central America) is not really feasible, since there is no airside transfer at US airports and immigration/customs needs to be cleared. And quite a few (e.g. from Russia) even need a visa ...
But agree, also for domestic connections the schedule is not great.
It's very feasible and lots of people do it every day, despite the inconvenience. I've worked at American and United and every single day we'd see tons of European tourists going through Dallas and Houston and Miami to various Central American and Mexican destinations. That AA flight to Madrid from Dallas use to get dozens of connections daily from all the small Mexican cities that Dallas served. It was interesting. On the other side, you...
It's very feasible and lots of people do it every day, despite the inconvenience. I've worked at American and United and every single day we'd see tons of European tourists going through Dallas and Houston and Miami to various Central American and Mexican destinations. That AA flight to Madrid from Dallas use to get dozens of connections daily from all the small Mexican cities that Dallas served. It was interesting. On the other side, you have the wealthy people from those countries traveling to Europe. Almost without exception, these are people who have US visas anyway, and if they're going to Europe then getting a US visa is not a problem.
Kiitos
This is brilliant news. Well done, AY (and DFW).