Finnair

Finnair (Finnish: Finnair Oyj, Swedish: Finnair Abp) is the flag carrier and largest airline of Finland, with its headquarters in Vantaa and its main hub at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. Finnair and its subsidiaries dominate both domestic and international air travel in Finland. Its major shareholder is the government of Finland, with 55.8% of the shares. Finnair is a member of the Oneworld airline alliance. In 2015, it transported over 10 million passengers to over 60 European, 13 Asian and 4 North-American destinations. As of January 2016, the airline employed 4,817 people.

Finnair is the fifth oldest airline in the world with uninterrupted existence. With no fatal or hull-loss accidents since 1963, Finnair is consistently on the list of safest airlines in the world (#3 in 2014).

History

Founding

In 1923, consul Bruno Lucander founded Finnair as Aero O/Y (Aero Ltd). The company code, "AY", originates from this; AY stands for Aero Yhtiö which means "company" in Finnish. Lucander had previously run the Finnish operations of the Estonian airline Aeronaut. In mid-1923 he concluded an agreement with Junkers Flugzeugwerke AG to provide aircraft and technical support in exchange for a 50% ownership in the new airline. The charter establishing the company was signed in Helsinki on 12 September 1923, and the company was entered into the trade register on 11 December 1923. The first flight was on 20 March 1924 from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia on a Junkers F.13 aircraft equipped with floats. The seaplane service ended in December 1936 following the construction of the first aerodromes in Finland.