Good day, everyone, and a warm welcome to this Finnair flight to the future. Our captain, Turkka Kuusisto, will take you through the sky with his co-pilots, who today are Pia Aaltonen-Forssell and Simon Large. The crew on this flight consists of our other executive board members. These people together are driving our journey forward today and tomorrow.
For those online, the webcast is live, and you can submit questions via the chat. For those on site, restrooms are located outside the auditorium on the right. Please keep mobile phones on silent. In case of an emergency, we would like to guide you to the nearest exits, which are over there and over there. We want to wish you a pleasant flight journey. Enjoy your flight.
Good day, and a warm welcome to Finnair's Capital Markets Update. I'm Erkka Salonen from Investor Relations, and it's my pleasure to be your host today. Whether you're here at Finnair headquarters or joining online, we're happy to have you with us. Before we start our journey, just a quick reminder that today's presentations will include forward-looking statements, which may change, of course, in the future. You'll find the full disclaimer on the screen. Let's start our exciting journey ahead of us. During our flight, we will go through our strategic direction, financial targets for 2026 to 2029, and how we're creating long-term value for our shareholders and customers alike. First, we'll hear from our CEO, Turkka Kuusisto, who will outline the new strategy. After Turkka, our CFO, Pia Aaltonen-Forssell, will take us through the financials.
We'll have a short break, and after the break, we'll hear from Simon Large, our Chief Customer Officer. Following Simon, we will have a panel discussion where Simon will be joined by our Chief Revenue Officer, Christine Rovelli, and Chief Operating Officer, Jaakko Schildt. Finally, Turkka will wrap up the day. There are several Q&A sessions throughout the program, so there is plenty of room for discussion. For those online, you can submit your questions via the webcast chat. To end the day, we'll have some treats from the Finnair Kitchen experience. Now, to kick off our journey, please welcome our CEO, Turkka Kuusisto. Please.
Very good afternoon and warm welcome to Finnair's Capital Markets Update 2025. It's been already six years since the last event, and a lot has happened since then. I have had the privilege of leading Finnair now for the past 18 months, and I continue to be on a daily basis deeply impressed by this company and exceptional people that make up the Finnair team. There haven't been major surprises, but I'm extremely proud of the professionalism, safety culture, and the resilience or can-do attitude that define this organization. These are the qualities that lay the foundation also for the future development of this company, work community, and journey ahead of us. I'm very delighted that today I can share our strategic direction, our strategic priorities, and also the ambition level when it comes to our financial performance.
I'm joined by my entire leadership team, and as you saw, most of them will join the discussion today to share their thoughts on our priorities and plans, but above all, how shall we deliver on these plans and commitments that we are giving today. Before leaning into the future, I want to actually reflect on the rich heritage and history of Finnair, a story of resilience, transformation, and purpose that continue to shape who we are today and, more importantly, tomorrow. Finnair is the fifth oldest airline in the world, and I think that that's a rather remarkable achievement. Actually, two weeks ago on Saturday, we turned 102 years, and on the right-hand side of this slide, you can see actually a picture of our maiden flight. It was operated from Helsinki, Katajanokka to Tallinn in March 1924.
It carried mail, no passengers at the time, but since then, we've been navigating through the changing world, different circumstances, and while doing so, we've been among the pioneers or innovators of this industry and aviation. For instance, already in 1983, we were the first company to open a non-stop route from Europe to Japan when we started to operate Helsinki-Tokyo with a DC-10 at the time, flying 16 hours over the North Pole. There are multiple other examples of innovations that we have delivered, for instance, in the digital front. Since this very first maiden flight, it's safety always, and that's something that I've been very impressed by, how the safety culture, safety procedures, and way of working basically lays the foundation for safely operated 300 flights on a daily basis. That's something that we will value extremely high on our agenda.
Today, Finnair is a network carrier with some + 100 destinations in our own network. That is operated by a fleet of 80 aircraft that carry close to 12 million passengers annually. The day-to-day magic is delivered by my close to 6,000 colleagues. I'll discuss our people agenda later today. On the right-hand side, you can see the outcome of the so-called successful pivot of our long-haul network that we needed to do after the closure of Russian airspace. Today, we are much more balanced. Having said all this, we are still extremely strong and important carrier between Asia and Europe with our 11 destinations. During the last summer season, we were the largest carrier between Japan and Europe with 25 weekly frequencies.
We decided to go all in, and as you can see from our traffic data that we publish on a monthly basis, that has been a great success. Parallel, we have also strengthened our westbound long-haul traffic and now have seven destinations in North America after we introduced Toronto as a reopening. After more than 10 years, we are continuing our flights from Helsinki to Toronto during the summer season of 2026. In airline business, the day-to-day operation, the regularity, punctuality, and the quality of the service has an extremely strong correlation with your customer satisfaction. Therefore, I'm extremely happy to report these numbers. Right after we got those CLA-originated disruptions behind us, early July, our regularity bounced back immediately back to 99%. That has then consequently led into a very rapid bounce back of our NPS scores.
I'll discuss NPS later in this presentation, but already now you can see that they are developing very positively. That's, of course, an internal perspective based on our own data, but we also value external opinions and external rankings. Therefore, again, very happy to report that for the 15th year in a row, Skytrax selected Finnair as the best Northern European carrier and actually our cabin crew as the best cabin crew in Northern Europe. You saw a live demo of how great they are. Secondly, Apex for the fourth year in a row graded us with a five-star rating. Therefore, based on internal data, external acknowledgments, I think that we are doing a good job, but there is plenty to improve. When we take the financial profile and perspective, of course, the last five years that were colored by double crises.
First, the global pandemic, COVID-19, basically stopped the aviation industry for a very long period of time, and that, of course, influenced Finnair. Right after the COVID-19, when different regions started to emerge and started to travel again, Finnair and the companies in the vicinity of Northern Europe faced another crisis. Russian aggression in Ukraine led to the closure of Russian airspace, and all of a sudden, our previous strategy and the previous competitive advantage disappeared basically over one night. Again, these numbers are very strong pieces of evidence that we have restored the revenue levels with this repivoted network and also restored the profitability. Over the last three fiscal years, 2023, 2024, and 2025, if and when we exclude the impact from industrial action, we can see that we are delivering solid profitability.
The traffic and passenger mix has changed, obviously, because of obvious reasons, closed Russian airspace from 2019. It is worth mentioning that even though Asia is not the biggest area for us anymore, it still represents 36% of our capacity allocation in the totality of our network. At the same time, the role of Europe and North Atlantic traffic has increased. In my opinion, the key message from this slide is that we are back. We have pivoted our network, we have reallocated our fleet, and we are back to generating strong cash flow of close to EUR 500 million annually. That is something that Pia will discuss in greater detail in her presentation. For me, this is the foundation on which we will build the future of Finnair.
When I started as CEO 18 months back, I felt that we really need to allocate enough time, resources, and brain power to run a thorough and comprehensive strategy process after the double crisis and the changed geopolitical situation. In the very early days of the process, we agreed on two key assumptions. First and foremost, the strategy is built on the assumption that Russian airspace will remain closed for the time being. In a positive scenario, if it reopened, that would be an upside for the strategy plan and financial that you will see later today. The second key assumption, we continue to develop Finnair as a standalone company. We must be capable of creating value to our shareholders and our customers on a standalone basis.
In addition to these two more strategic choices or key assumptions, I also felt that it's time to crystallize or clarify who we are and why do we exist, and what value do we provide for the stakeholder ecosystem around us. With our heart in Finland, we make every journey better today and tomorrow. We've worked intensively with this, with my leadership team, with the whole organization to really understand what value do we bring. Heart in Finland is, of course, a reflection of the changed geopolitical situation, the change in the customer mix that we will discuss today, but also to recognize that our home heritage and Helsinki Airport, Helsinki hub, is in Finland. That gives us the connectivity for the international transfer passengers, but also enables us to develop our network in the from and to Finland axis.
Every journey better is the manifesto for a customer-first, customer-centric strategy. There is plenty to do in terms of understanding customers' needs today and tomorrow and develop our services accordingly. Speaking of today, today and tomorrow, I guess, is this positive dualism that while we are delivering results and high quality of service today, we are also here to build the next 100 years for Finnair. This thinking and clarification guided the strategy process, the choices we've made, and also the priorities that we have set for ourselves. Let me discuss our strategy for 2026 until 2029. It all starts from the customers and actually, to be more specific, from the core customers. Those customers who fly with us the most.
It's a bit smaller group than the total population of our customer base, but they are extremely valuable for us from the revenue generation point of view and also from the profitability point of view. Having said all this, in addition to this strong base of core customers, the most loyal customers that we have, we, of course, need to serve the connecting or transfer passengers that connect through Helsinki Airport to other destinations. They still represent some 50% of the revenue pool that we have, but in order to develop our services and to be more sharp, more prioritized to enable faster transformation, we want to really put the development of core customers into the spotlight of our business development agenda. Actually, core customers are already now rather satisfied with us. The total population of Finnair Plus members, the NPS is 42.
The top tiers, Platinum, Lumos, and Platinums are actually trending very close to 50, and these are fresh numbers. Also, the total population of our customers currently considers that we are also moving to the right direction. Thirty-seven, whereas the industry peer benchmark is closer to 30. This gives us a great foundation to develop our services for the future. What do the core customers and customers prefer? Based on the understanding, based on the data that we have analyzed, they prefer choice, further engagement, convenience, and reliability. Off you go again. It becomes a bit of a flywheel.
From the investor's point of view, this fully integrated customer-first strategy also results in improving top-line development and also the unit KPIs, be it RASK, RPK yield, because we are capable of boosting the top line actually with rather little investments, especially in the Choice and Engagement part. I'll discuss Choice first. Our commercial strategy is built on a modular product portfolio that is sold through modern channels in the form of modern retailing. On the right-hand side, left-hand side, modular product portfolio, what to sell, a right product. The channels, digital channels, already 72% is sold through so-called modern channels, so the right channel and right time. Finally, personalized offers, know your customer, AI-driven personalization to a right person. Right product in right time through right channel to a right person. We can develop our revenue streams and also top-line development.
This is not a plan on a paper. We are already in motion. In Q3 2025, the revenue of ancillary sales bypassed our cargo revenue. It is currently some 6% of our total revenue pool, and towards the end of the decade, it will be a double-digit number. This share of passengers in modern channels is an extremely important vehicle for us that enables us to have the interaction directly with our especially consumer customers. Benefits being for the customers that you have freedom of choice. If you value a good value product, we can offer you a rather cheap economy light tickets, but if you are up for more premium or luxury, our product offering is an award-winning business-class product in a wide-body aircraft. We can also cater for that for you.
Secondly, from the company's point of view, this is extremely important from the point of view of what's our response to competition. With this commercial strategy, we can compete both with the LCCs, but also those more traditional full-service carriers that also provide premium and business-class products. Maybe the final perspective is the investor perspective. Top-line development with CapEx Light approach. Developing this area does not require new fleet. Digital development and innovation. The second part is engagement, loyalty beyond travel. Currently, we have some 2.4 million active members in our Finnair Plus frequent flyer program. Total population being north of 5 million. I see this as a tremendous opportunity to build further engagement, find and develop revenue sources that are not necessarily flight-related, that you can earn and burn Finnair Plus loyalty points being obvious, even though your flight would be, next flight would be six months out.
There are plenty of opportunities to widen the partner ecosystem, be it banks or financial institutions or retail companies and such that have a high volume of B2C transactions. This will get us access to recurring revenue streams and stronger customer loyalty and improve our profitability. Luckily, this is something that we do not need to reinvent the wheel. There are plenty of global examples where this has been taken much further. Stealing with pride, I think that we have plenty of opportunities while we also build on the strengths that we have in our own system. Third component, a network to serve our core customers, convenience, the breadth and the width of the network. We anticipate that the market or markets where we operate, our core markets, will grow by some 4% annually during the strategy cycle. We will capture our fair share of that.
How to do it? Helsinki hub continues to be a great connecting hub for international passenger flows, transfer passengers. At the same time, we will increase both frequencies and destinations from and to Helsinki. This morning, we communicated that we are adding seven destinations to our summer schedule of 2026. For the winter season of 2026, we will reopen direct flights from Europe to Lapland, Paris, Brussels, and Zurich. Concrete piece of evidence that this plan is already in motion. Partnerships and alliances are vitally important for us. Oneworld, the alliance, and the different joint businesses we are a member of. Simon will discuss these topics in his presentation, but already now, I want to highlight that being part of Oneworld and also those joint businesses is an immense boost for our demand.
Through with our partners, we get connectivity to global mega hubs, be it Dallas, London, Doha, and Hong Kong in Greater China. When I meet my airline CEO colleagues, let's say American Airlines, Robert Isom, or Japan Airlines, Tottori-san, they really value Finnair as a partner. Even though we are a bit smaller, they do see that we have a lot to contribute in terms of digitalization, product development, and also the connectivity that we can provide through Helsinki hub. Fleet renewal and near-term capacity additions. Unfortunately, today, we don't have yet news related to the partial narrow-body renewal. Pia will discuss the thinking and frame in her presentation. We have prioritized self-discipline. We want to run that process extremely diligently, and we will tell more when the time is right.
In the meantime, we are also evaluating different options when it comes to near-term capacity additions, and the press release from this morning is a concrete example of that we are also doing while we are planning for the longer-term fleet renewal. The fourth component, reliability, consistent and efficient journeys. That is the foundation of an airline company. At the end of the day, we are in the business of getting people where they need to be as planned. I already mentioned the strong safety culture, and as a new CEO, that is something that surprises me positively on a daily basis. I have learned a practice that I also join the quarterly safety review board meetings, and in all transparency, happy to report that there is always something new that we find and improve our processes on a continuous improvement mindset in our mind.
Safety is also related very closely to high on-time performance and regularity and service delivery success. As already mentioned, these are highly correlated with the NPS or broader concepts of customer satisfaction. As we can see, regularity 99.2%, on-time performance 81.6%, these are world-class numbers. Why that is important from the investor's point of view? High on-time performance, regularity, lay the foundation for cost competitiveness and managing our cost base. Again, in Pia's presentation, you will learn more about our CASK, Cost per Available Seat Kilometer Development, and we are doing actually very good. That continues to be on top of our priority list when it comes to securing our competitiveness for many reasons, but I would like to mention two.
Of course, we need to be fit for the future from the competition point of view, so therefore we will continuously develop our cost competitiveness and secure that our CASK is developing favorably in the market conditions. Referring back to those fleet investments, we need to deliver strong cash flow, and therefore also cost competitiveness is something that we need to very closely monitor and further develop. That concludes the what part, that what we want to do. The big question is how. We identified six enablers that are needed to successfully execute this strategy. My colleagues, close to 6,000 Finnair colleagues, is the most important enabler. Internally, we call it one crew because it's all about developing one crew culture that aims towards high-performance organizational culture, and that is done by continuous dialogue and engagement.
My 6,000 colleagues, we come from more than 60 nationalities. This is a very diverse organization. We have more than 20,000 job applications on an annual basis. Why I want to mention that? From the perspective of getting access to the needed talent. Those of you who follow our industry globally might have learned that there is a short of pilots or short of shortage of cabin crew members. We do not. We get enough good applications so that we can also employ the people that we need in terms of delivering the growth that you just saw. Why I want to highlight this one crew perspective? Because in connection with the reliability part, the on-time performance, regularity, and the quality of service are done and executed through our people.
This also lays foundation to the positive cost competitiveness development and also securing that our CASK and other cost-related KPIs are developing favorably. The second important enabler is our Finnish brand that fuels our strategy execution. This is again in Simon's section, but already now let me mention that we want to build better preference among our customers. We want to differentiate from competition and also take our employees on board to build unified employee experience, customer experience, and brand experience holistically. Without going into Simon's presentation, I guess that all of us who have been on board Finnair, you might have sensed a hint of Finnish happiness. The rest for everyday AI, very topical theme. Of course, we will invest into it. We will learn about it. Way of working, be it office operational processes and such. End-to-end processes, very important.
We are a functional organization set up, so therefore we need to secure that the information flows, operational flows are becoming more and more efficient on a daily basis horizontally in this company. Already mentioned few strategic collaborations or partners, be it Oneworld or joint businesses. In addition to this array of partners, we of course need to work very closely with the airport network operator Finavia in Finland and also those companies who are developing the next generation aviation fuel, be it SAF or ESAF. Speaking of which, we also want to drive ESG in line with the industry, and today I focus on environmental sustainability because decarbonization is the biggest challenge in our industry and aviation when it comes to environmental sustainability. It requires a very wide toolbox and a lot of activities, and we are doing a lot. We are considering the fleet renewal.
The next generation narrow-body engines and aircraft consume some 20% less fuel, so CO2 footprint will decrease. At the same time, on a daily basis, we need to optimize the network and our operations. For instance, we are taxiing with only one engine on while our aircraft are moving on ground. Limiting waste, reducing the weight on aircraft, but at the end of the day, this all boils down to next generation fuels being SAF. Therefore, we also want to work very intensively with the fuel producers when it comes to securing the affordability and availability of SAF. We stay very committed to when it comes to reaching the net zero by 2050. With this strategy, we aim at creating stakeholder value holistically, pushing our total NPS across the total customer base above 40 in order to drive better revenue development and better RASK development.
From the employee side, organizational health side, we want to decisively improve the engagement score index and continue to rank among the top employers so that we have access to the needed talent to fuel the growth. At the same time, as I already mentioned, this is the foundation that delivers those safe, reliable plus 300 flights on a daily basis that has a direct link to shareholder value through cost control, cost management, and CASK development. Finally, speaking of the shareholders, this is a profit improvement plan. By the end of 2029, we aim at delivering comparable EBITDA within the range of 6%-8%. That is more ambitious than earlier, while maintaining the current shareholder return policy. Pia will discuss the wider matrix of our financial objectives and targets in her presentation. To sum it up, key takeaways from my side.
We focus on core customers and their freedom of choice. We will build loyalty beyond travel. One and two are the positive contributors to the organic growth in our core markets, improves of profitability ratios. We will start renewing our narrow-body fleet partially. We will drive the culture of one crew to stay cost competitive, develop our reliability, punctuality, and secure that we operate safely every day, 360 days per annum. We will secure that all these activities are also positively contributing to cost competitiveness and continuous improvement. I'm one point, five minutes overtime. That's within the OTP interval. Thank you.
Thank you, Turkka, for those insights. We now open the floor for any questions you may have. Please raise your hand or use the webcast chat. Jaakko, please.
Good afternoon, Jaakko Tyrväinen from Finland. Regarding the. From SEB and Finland.
Regarding the 4% passenger growth target that you have in place and thinking about this core customer group coming from Finland, in your own thinking, how large share of that 4% passenger growth is expected to come from Finland and how much is counted for international passengers?
That's actually a very relevant question and rather balanced. Maybe it's a bit lower in Finland, whereas the international transfer flows are a bit higher. All in all, the 4% growth is pretty balanced.
The second one goes to the plan, introduce a bit smaller aircraft going forward in the narrow-body and regional side. How do the dynamics of your key KPIs change? You need to perhaps fly more frequently. What are the key KPIs and the key aircraft-specific kind of profitability components that you need to excel in order to deliver this strategy kind of well?
In general, in the current geopolitical situation, we prefer a bit smaller gauge because Russian airspace is closed. We need a bit more frequencies to fulfill our wide-body operation. As we are still in the process of evaluating the different options for which aircraft type will fit our needs the best, it's still something that is out there. All in all, it's an optimization game when it comes to optimizing the scale and frequencies. There is a positive side in our kind of northern part of Europe where we operate, that we are not slot controlled or there are no slot constraints. Adding frequencies does not linearly increase. It increases your cost most likely linearly versus in a step-change manner. Therefore, that's something that we continue to optimize.
In the big scheme of things, this narrow-body fleet renewal also positively supports the improving profitability figures that you saw.
Perhaps still on the same topic, what are the key risks? You open up new destinations. There is always a risk that this comes with a bit of a lower load factor in the beginning of the route. How are you tackling this challenge that comes from new destinations?
I guess it's striking the right balance to which extent you want to take commercial risk. In my opinion, that's also something that we need to take so that we can also enable growth. There is a bit of a learning curve always when you open a new route.
But especially after this successful network pivot that we did after the closure of Russian airspace, we have rather good mechanisms and ways to optimize and also learn what works and what does not. Therefore, we have the needed agility also to react if and when needed.
Good. Thank you.
There is at least one question in the room.
Hi, it is Joonas Ilvonen from Evli. If I can just return to this 4% passenger growth question. You say it should be very balanced between Finnish and international passengers. What about between route areas? Is it more towards shorter haul routes, or should it also be very balanced between short and long-term routes?
Of course, there are some differences. For instance, Japan is still recovering from the pandemic. They were one of the slow movers after the pandemic to get back to the wings.
There are some regional differences. Again, if I take the westbound to eastbound axis and then Europe short-haul, long-haul axis, the demand growth is rather balanced. Of course, this year we have faced this softening of North Atlantic traffic because of the tariffs and trade war. Of course, in the medium to longer term, we also see the North Atlantic market as very important for us because that is the largest source of demand in our business.
Okay, thanks. What about your Finnish market share of Helsinki Airport traffic? Can you put any precise figure on that? I think it is probably pretty high, but do you have any exact figures on it?
Our Finnish customers prefer Finnair, and I guess that can be found from the Finavia data, for instance, but it is not of 70%.
Right. Maybe last question. You mentioned these direct routes from Lapland to Europe.
I think the situation there might be a bit more difficult. I mean, at least many European airlines have opened their direct routes from, let's say, U.K. to Lapland to Rovaniemi and the other Lapland airports recently. How would you comment on that competitive situation versus how it is in the Helsinki Airport?
First and foremost, I'm of course very happy that Lapland is an attractive tourist destination. You need to see the big picture, in my opinion. We are the only operator who is flying to Lapland year-round. Now, when they introduced a tighter slot control when it comes to being on time, I think that that's also favoring us because we are committed to flying the schedule that we have put out. We have increased our capacity for this winter season also to a large extent.
In order to also provide the Finnair service from Europe to Lapland, we are reopening the business concept that you can also fly from Europe to Lapland with us and those three cities already mentioned. We are investing into Lapland. Of course, we welcome competition, but we focus on year-round operation and also doing tactically smart moves so that we can also grow.
Thanks. That's all from me.
Perhaps a question online. This is coming from Mika Leskinen, S-Bank. How important is domestic economic growth to your targets?
Of course, domestic economic growth is a great indicator of the demand growth. Therefore, something that we need to follow very closely. After the pandemic, there is some evidence that overall consumer confidence doesn't necessarily correlate with the travel intentions. There's a bit of a behavioral pattern after the pandemic that there is a preference to travel.
It's a demand in a way rather resilient. Of course, the GDP development closely correlates with the demand development in our business.
Yes. Pasi, please.
Thanks for the presentation. This is Pasi from Nordea. Regarding the fleet renewal project, if you are going to order new Airbus planes, would it take three years or six years to get this place up and running here in Helsinki? Meanwhile, if you are going to buy a bit smaller planes, can you actually operate these smaller planes with a higher or lower profitability than these Airbus 320-21 planes? Thanks.
I don't want to speculate about the delivery times of any of the OEMs because no choices have been made. Of course, we need to recognize that the supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are rather persistent.
There are delivery time delays among basically all manufacturers, not only the airframe, but also engines and such. Something that we need to take into consideration while we are making our analysis and decisions. When it comes to the so-called midterm capacity solution, that's a tactical tool to capture the growth that is available now. Of course, if and when you use used aircraft or wet leases or dry leases, they are not that capital intensive. Of course, we have very thorough and detailed calculations behind each and every business case. We also want to grow while we are executing this longer-term fleet renewal project.
There are quite many questions regarding the narrow-body fleet renewal, but perhaps one question regarding long-haul fleet. This is coming from Hans-Jørgen Elnäs. What is the outlook until financial year 2020 on your long-haul fleet?
Can we expect the fleet to be reduced, increased, or at the present level?
I guess all in all, the current wide-body fleet is right-sized, especially after we have successfully executed these tactical collaborations with Qatar Airways and Qantas block space agreements, dry leases and wet leases, and also the 350s that are now utilized when it comes to the longer Asian routes. It is a very capable plane still, even though the Russian airspace is closed. All in all, in the big scheme of things, I think that the fleet is right-sized. Of course, that is something that we do on a daily basis in a company like ours, that we optimize the capacity.
Yes. Perhaps yes, Jaakko.
Jaakko from SEB continuing. You mentioned the alliances and your importance to U.S. and Japan partners. There are some Chinese carriers who can fly over Russia.
Could you consider partnering with those in order to provide connectivity in Europe for such players?
Short answer, no. Because the airspace is closed, there are sanctions, and of course, that's also against our values. Therefore, we will follow the Western policies, comply with the sanctions, and we will focus on the partnership with Chal.
Thanks.
Perhaps one more question online. This is coming from Markku Moilanen from Nordea. You mentioned that the company is considering adding used smaller aircraft into its capacity in the near term. Can you talk more about this timetable? How many planes are you talking about? Are you planning to buy or lease these planes? What is the expected cost? Quite many questions.
Quite many questions. I need to ask Christine to assist me later today. This is still on a drawing table, but that's our tactical intention.
We want to increase our frequencies and also capture the growth that is available now. I don't want to go into the details of the CLA round with the pilots, but one resolution out of that CLA process was that we can increase the number of jets operated by Norra from 12 to 16. So that leaves at least some type of a ballpark figure that what could we do.
Any final question from the room? I guess then we're good to go. Thank you, Turkka.
Thank you.
Next, we will hear from Pia Aaltonen-Forssell, our CFO, who will walk us through Finnair's financial targets and disciplined investment approach. Please, Pia.
Thank you, Erkka, and thank you, Turkka, for an inspiring presentation. Thank you for welcoming me to this team. It's been a great pleasure to join.
Most of you know I've been here since August of this year. First of all, I do want to say and share also some of the things that really impressed me when I joined. Actually, Turkka just told one of them. This relentless focus on safety has really been, if not mind-blowing, then at least something very, very impressive. Another really impressive thing has been the passion for flying. I mean, it's wonderful to work in a company where people are passionate about what they do. We should do business, of course, as well. Turkka said it, we are back. I think that's one of the first findings, obviously, that I will speak to still today to prove the point that following some more difficult years, the competitiveness has been restored. Not only that, now we are looking forward.
I really look forward to Simon Large's presentation later today to explain more about the approaches that we are taking both in modern retailing, in loyalty. As a CFO, this makes me especially happy because every EUR 1 that we can generate through this is done with very light capital expenditure. We did some calculations, and it is less than EUR 0.10 per every EUR 1 that we can earn. There is a very quick payback out of these investments that we are making into this area. Finally, we are now also able to look long-term into the future to start the narrow-body fleet renewal. The key here as well is responding to the societal needs of decarbonization and our internal needs of operational efficiency and offering to our customers what they really want at this point in time. That is where we are.
We will today look at our financial targets. If we look at these targets and the targeted margins as well as the contemplated capital structure, I think that we are able to deliver return on capital employed in the mid-teens. We are also able to deliver total shareholder returns if we include dividends of 10%-12% annually. This is a good case to look at. Please join me on this ride. I really want to talk to you about how this strategy where we put the customer first also will be a strategy about better margins and, of course, capital efficiency. A few words first to just sort of look at where we were and where we are now. A few points on restoring financial resilience as such. You can see cash flow in this picture.
I think it's an important driver for restoring the financial resilience because we have generated stronger cash flows and we have as well been supported by the recovery of travel following the pandemic and closure of Russian airspace, but also a good and diligent work by the team to reset the network and restore the cash and cost balances here. I looked at the history. We have now delivered five consecutive quarters of improving cash flows, operating cash flows, and the leverage is back to around two times. One important point is achieving targets in history. When I look at the targets that were set back in 2023, we have really put that, let's say, target frame in place with many of the KPIs and the margin targets where, as Turkka showed earlier, reached early in that period as well.
Let me show you one more thing relating to our balance sheet. This is a comparison also to peers. I'm showing you here something about our cash-to-sales ratio, and maybe that is a bit airline specific. For those of you listening from Finland, I also want to reiterate that this is important for Finnair because we have unflown ticket liability. We want to have cash to cover that. Of course, we want to have cash in terms also of future CapEx needs. We have an undrawn revolving credit facility of EUR 200 million that would still add to liquidity here. I think our cash balances for the time being are very solid and also compared to peers. You see that our leverage is on a good level compared to peers. If you look at our equity ratio, you will see it's adequate.
It's on an adequate level also compared to peers. I would remind, if you are one history digger, that historically we had some items there in our equity that were fairly expensive. We have paid them off. At this point in time, what we have in our equity, it's really hard equity. It's really the right kind of equity. Today we have some news from Standard and Poor's as well. They have reiterated our credit rating with a stable outlook and the double B plus. This is also a good statement and it paves the way for having an opening for different types of funding solutions if we so wish. Now let's have a look at some of the revenue drivers. This again is a little bit of the history just to prove the point of where we are today.
I do think Turkka explained this rather well in his presentation already, the development of the regional diversification or the regional development of our network. Asia, as Turkka has shown, was more than 50% of our ASKs just before the pandemic. Now we are to 36%. Our position in Japan remains very strong. There are, of course, some other destinations in Asia that are not as strong, for example, China at this point in time. I would still remind you that flying to Japan, it carries a good profitability to us. With this network and with these destinations also within Europe being reset, what you have seen, Europe remains very important for us. It is a very dense network and it is also a network that stands on its own feet in a profitable way.
All of these are proof points of the strength and the agility of the team here and of the company for sure. With this network, we are today having around 12 million passengers per year. Really a core assumption of our strategy is that this demand will continue to grow in our core markets. Our RASK, of course, has already been a bit boosted by the ancillary revenues, and this will continue in the years to come. Our strategy has delivered and will deliver resilience first and growth second, and in that order also going forward. Okay, let's have a look at costs. When we are talking about the costs, my main message here is that we've done a complete reset of our cost base. This is the CASK, and you can see here that we are almost excluding fuel back to levels pre-COVID.
If someone thought about inflation and escalating costs, I think that we have shown very good discipline in restoring the pre-COVID levels. When you look at fuel included, please note that the decarbonization costs have also been pushing that up. I still wanted to mention that the team has had a very disciplined approach to achieving cost savings. It is this totality of the network efficiency, the good and diligent work by the team, and also a lot of really, I would say, significant structural changes, both in SG&A or in many other parts of the company as well that have helped to achieve this level. I still want to take this one step deeper. Without going into the fine details of ASK and CASK and how it is all calculated, I still think it is relevant to look at what are the distances that we are flying.
Because obviously, when you have more ASKs, you have more where to, so to say, spread the cost. We wanted to make some calculations and comparisons sort of evening out for that and comparing apples to apples. Let's look at some work that our team has done here. The idea here is to show our peers, show their CASK, and also show the average distance traveled per flight. To sort of show also the typical network structure of the network. We wanted to show our competitors as they are reporting. That's what you see here. We wanted to simulate Finnair for like if we were in their shoes, like if we were flying their distances. That's this sort of purple or lilac little graph that you can see here.
What that shows is that when we look at the full service carriers, our main competitors, you can see that basically compared to all of them, we are very cost competitive. We have found a model to deliver with the size and the structure of airline that we are. Our work has paid off. Now with this position, we are ready to move forward. Next, I will talk to you about our strategic financial targets. A key part of our future is also generating better cash flows and enabling the future fleet renewal through these better cash flows by having a margin improvement. That's why it's really essential here to start by discussing the EUR 100 million profitability improvement that we want to reach by 2029. That's really the starting point of our work here.
I do not want to steal all the thunder from Simon. I know he will discuss in more detail CapEx-like retailing and loyalty. You see that is about 2/3 of the improvement. We are constantly continuing to push on what I call more traditional elements here. These are, of course, topics where we have continuous cost control. We are continuously looking at the fleet efficiency. I do want to add artificial intelligence because Turkka mentioned it, but I think we have much more than talk. We already have Sisu. Sisu is serving our customers. I still want to say this is more than just the first attempt at using artificial intelligence in our customer service. It is already reliable. It is already in the important languages. It is already as well with personalized data. There is a lot more to it than a first attempt.
When I joined the team, my own team, everyone is already using for their personal efficiency all of those modern tools that you are all talking about and have heard. We are already there as well. This can take us now to the future. I want to talk you briefly through the development from our current margin levels into the targeted margin levels. We are starting here with the actuals from 2024, the reason being that the 2025 figures were so impacted by the strikes. Building from that, there's a bit of a margin improvement through the bigger scale, the growth in line with demand. You can see obviously the importance of our strategic actions. There is, however, something that we need to offset that we already know is coming, and that's increased regulation costs for decarbonization.
These are costs for, for example, EU ETS, so no more free emission rights in EU. These are costs for sustainable aviation fuel where the mandates are already in place as we speak. This is a situation that we need to find a way to improve our margin despite these already known increased costs. The profitability improvement is the way to do that. Our 6%-8% margin target, when we look at the sort of lower end of the range, is underpinned by our own strategic actions. If we are to expand to the higher level of 7%-8%, then we would have to live in a world where there is no more unfavorable regulation in terms of costs other than what we would know about right now. As well, the market conditions broadly would develop in a positive way.
This is the way how we see the EBIT development and the targeted level of 6%-8% in the next year. I do not want to go too deep into RASK and CASK, but as they are important elements, I just wanted to show how we have been thinking about them in our own modeling. The headline of the RASK development is a 2% CAGR over this period of time. It is supported by the near-term capacity additions to our regional network. It is supported by the growth in line with demand. It is as well supported by the development of the retailing loyalty that Simon will describe. Finally, if we then still look at the CASK from this perspective, we will also see some increases in costs. These costs are based on the increased sustainability regulation.
I wanted to make this one step more tangible and just say what we are foreseeing next year, so 2026, given our current volumes and plans and the current regulation with SAF and EU ETS and CORSIA, etc., it's a cost of about EUR 140 million per year. This year we have already had a level of about EUR 100 million. These are very significant cost elements as such. We will have to continue working on our cost competitiveness. We will use the same tools as before. I'll pick on one thing that Turkka said to add to my previous talk, which is operationally first time right. Our customers are happier, but we also generate better profits when things are done first time right and we do not have sort of additional costs from hassle or otherwise.
With this plan, you will see tangible results of our costs, working on our costs, staying disciplined on them, as well as on the retailing program. You will see these results already over the next eight quarters for sure. We will deliver higher RASK and maintain a very disciplined approach to costs as well as the fleet efficiency. This is a part of how we operate today. Now I will turn to the final missing piece of the puzzle, which is around the fleet. We already had some questions to Turkka in his presentation about the current fleet. Maybe this is a bit of a reminder what that current fleet of 80 aircraft consists of. You see first our wide bodies, in total 26 aircraft. Of course, our flagship, the Airbus A350 fleet, it's a young fleet, as you can see here. It's also an award-winning fleet.
We have the Airbus A330, which is somewhat older. Also, sort of the resetting of how to utilize these aircraft was an important part of the overall reset. This has also resulted in partnerships, as Turkka has described. Currently, four out of this eight fleet is already sort of flying and helping also profitability with flying for others. Our narrow-body fleet is aging, as you also see from the statistics and the description here. When we are renewing the narrow-body fleet, we will also look at things like fuel efficiency, emission efficiency, operational flexibility. It will support growth in our core markets and maintain that competitive edge. The thing is that the foreseen investment is significant. It is between EUR 2 billion-EUR 2.5 billion by 2029. We can see that a very significant part of this is the fleet renewal.
Of course, there are also certain investments, whether it's to AI, digitalization, and specifically also to maintenance of the existing fleet. We will also cater for that. We also already discussed today about the fact that the supply chains are still somewhat stressed after the COVID. There could be quite a duration until we really can renew a bigger part of the fleet. Therefore, the campaigns for the fleet are likely to occur towards the end of the strategy period. We think that by 2029, we should have achieved this step of already as well have grown our fleet. Maybe it's grown 10%-20%. This is still subject to the actual negotiations that will be carried through. How will we carry this through? What is the basis? How will this be treated in our balance sheet?
When we look at the targeted operating cash flows with this model, we are targeting cash flows of north of EUR 500 million per year. That is really the most important ingredient here. We will be balancing these investment needs with our cash flows. We can and we will remain opportunistic. I think Turkka as well explained this already today. We can capture growth through some more flexible arrangement, maybe some wet leases, maybe even acquiring individual sort of used aircraft. With all of that, we will continue to generate cash flows, improve our cash flows in the next years, and then enable these investments mainly through our own balance sheet. When I say mainly, I think we have some good experiences from leasing from the history. Of course, if there are really good deals to be had, we would not exclude that.
Mainly, the thinking is that we will be able to carry through this investment to our own balance sheet. Now that I talked about all of this, I finally have set the scene for summarizing our financial targets for the period up until 2029. Here we go. We will grow in line with demand in our core markets of 4% CAGR. This will deliver an ambitious EBIT margin target of 6%-8% that is underpinned and anchored by our own profitability improvements of EUR 100 million. We will start our fleet renewal, and we do foresee a CapEx envelope of between EUR 2 billion and EUR 2.5 billion during this period. We will do this within the guardrails of keeping a healthy cash-to-sales ratio as well as a healthy leverage of between 1 and 2 times.
Finally, we reiterate our dividend policy, maintain this policy of 1/3 of the EPS. I did do a little bit of sort of back-of-the-envelope calculations. I think this dividend would be about 3%-4% of our market cap, you know, if we look at the yield to our shareholders. Finnair has shifted from survival to sustainable value creation. We are a smaller, stronger airline with visible cash flows, measured growth, and clear capital returns. That is really what you, all our investors, own today. Dear shareholders, dear audience, I joined the company in August. It has been a true pleasure to work with this strategic plan and these financial targets.
I think where we stand today, what we have gone through together, and the detailed plans that we have set, I'm convinced that we are set up for the future, and I'm convinced that we can reach these financial targets. Thank you.
Thank you, Pia. We now welcome your questions. Again, feel free to raise your hand or use the online chat. Please.
All right, thank you. It's Joonas here from OP. First of all, regarding the 10%-20% increase in the fleet size, you're now at the high end of your leverage target range of 1 and 2. Is the increase in the fleet size in any way dependent on meeting your profitability target that you have now set for yourselves?
I think it's dependent on us taking measured steps as we build our cash flows.
That is why we are having several sort of tools in our portfolio. It's not one big bang. It's certain actions right now to already grow the capacity on a sort of a midterm basis, as well as then starting the bigger campaigns where I'm sure you can ask Christine later and she can tell more. I think my answer is that to maintain this leverage, we will need to generate the cash flows already in the next years. Achieving our RASK improvements, keeping the cost discipline, and generating cash flows, that will be the tool to keep this whole thing, you know, to keep the measured leverage as well.
All right, thank you. The financing of the EUR 2 billion-EUR 2.5 billion investment program, I guess it's mostly based on operating cash flow generation, but would you also consider selling some of your planes?
You've now had these leases out to other airlines. What's the strategy in that?
I love your question because I think it's pointed to sort of a thinner culture of, you know, just finding the best way to do it. I would more see this as clear-cut, like it's cash flow. To sort of think about this over time, I am absolutely sure, you know, with our reiterated credit rating, etc., I mean, we have multiple tools available for us. You know, we could also be active just to make sure we have the appropriate sort of funding streams available. On top of that, why not consider certain cases of operational leases as well? That's really the mix we could see. If we then can make some cash by selling some old equipment, that's great. That's probably a spice.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Any other questions in the room? There is at least one.
Joonas Ilvonen from Evli. If I can come back to this financing question. You say that this profitability improvement is an important part of this whole financing strategy. Do I also get it that you say your leverage target is two times net debt to EBITDA, but you are also quite ready to maybe improve your absolute indebtedness by, let's say, a couple hundred million EUR?
Yes, I think that's a fair assessment.
All right. Any comments on relative profitability levels between Europe and Asia now that I think especially Asia has developed quite well this year?
Asia has developed really well this year. You said the comparison to Europe. Of course, Europe is short-haul. You know, it has a different character.
I think it's important to say that Europe also stands on its own feet in terms of profitability. Obviously, you know, long-haul is attractive. What I think is important to state is that when we think about profitability, we do need to consider the full network. Even though, you know, we would talk about Europe and Asia separately, actually all connections in Europe remain really important for then as well reaching that profitability on the long-haul routes. They always are interconnected.
All right. Maybe final question related to that. Can you give us the percentage of your long-haul passengers which are connecting versus point-to-point?
Sort of broadly, transfer passengers are maybe up to half of our passengers.
Now, when you are asking how many would actually have the, you know, really start from Helsinki versus start somewhere else, maybe we need to reiterate on that question.
Thanks.
Yes, Pasi. Sorry, Antti first.
Antti Viljakainen from Inderes. If I remember correctly, six years ago in this capital markets update or capital markets day, revenue management system was like an actual topic. And since then, revenue management became a bit difficult due to this double crisis. My question is, how does this system function nowadays from CFO perspective?
Yeah. Antti, thanks for asking. You know I wasn't here six years ago to hear that great speech. I cannot comment on that. I can comment on what I see in real life.
I actually see some people in the room smiling right now because I think underneath it is a really important part of how we operate and how we work. It is really sort of the constant reiteration. First, of course, sort of having the right network, but then as well, you know, always being out for that, you know, what is the best price we could get in the market and, you know, how do we work with that? If you add on top of that, giving customers the choice, you know, you can choose between different types of tickets and you can also sort of add on what you want to have. I think it has only developed more since what you have seen. If you allude to that it's difficult to do certain things during crisis periods, you are absolutely right.
That's now history.
Secondly, about the profitability target, should we expect that the path to the 6%-8% by the end of 2029 is linear or bumpy or a form of some other curve?
Yeah. If you look at, of course, 2025 performance, the impact of the strikes on profitability were, you know, EUR 70 million-ish. It means that there will be a step up in 2026 in the absence of that. In that sense, not linear from where we stand exactly for the year 2025. I think that many of these actions that we have in place are of the nature where you build and build and build and build. Once we get sort of that lift from the current low levels that were caused by the strikes, then I think you could expect something a bit smoother.
Thank you.
Thanks, Antti.
Thanks. This is Pasi from Nordea. Two questions. First, regarding your top line and the split between the business and lesser customers. What's roughly the ballpark when looking at the kind of business-based kind of revenue you're receiving against the kind of lesser or the ordinary travelers? The second question is related to your financial targets. In the case you are not able to reach, let's say, 7%-8% EBIT margin, what are priorities between the balance sheet and dividend payments and also the growth investments? In the case you are not able to fund this program with the cash flow, what would be the priorities? Could you first give off dividend payments or ruin the balance sheet raiser expectations, or then do you still keep on keeping these growth investments intact? Thanks.
Thanks, Pasi.
I do think, you know, a dividend policy and the dividend sort of, you know, the dividend policy is now set. That is, of course, to some extent on an absolute level then dependent on the profitability level that we will reach. There is inherently, you know, there's sort of built into that some flexibility. That is obviously, you know, a serious question for the board to consider. I would not open it up to say this is then the way to sort of find the flexibility. I think we need to find the flexibility within our own choices, within our own operations. That is also why we really need this like step by step by step by step approach here as a way of just, you know, always pacing the growth in accordance with our funding ability, which is mainly based on the cash flow.
Then the leisure business, I would refer to my IR, but I'm not sure we have really published that ever. At least not in any of the notes that I've read have I found it. Maybe that remains something we need to consider, how to share that information.
Excellent. I hear you. Just to confirm, you don't publish priorities between the growth investments, balance sheet, and the dividend currently? Yeah. When looking at your cost savings program, I mean, if I remember right, that has been the case last, let's say, you have done it 15 times already, turning all the stones around. How come on the next time you can actually find EUR 100 million easily without kind of having that before? What are the key drivers you have now found that?
Yeah, I think there are new things happening, such as artificial intelligence and, you know, the way that develops really strongly. It's not only about sort of how we do our work internally. It's actually really step changes. As you are here in the room, we will have some demos during the break. You will maybe be able to challenge, you know, some of the things that we are already doing. The technological development is allowing for certain step changes also going forward. Definitely, you know, we are in a vast ecosystem of partnerships. The right balance between insourcing, outsourcing, you know, we do have some contracts coming up for renewal, and we will need to be super tight when we take all those discussions. What's, you know, what's the best for Finnair going forward?
You know, out of that EUR 100 million, we think about 1/3 is these more traditional elements that you now referred to. I can already now see sort of the loan release there being long enough to find something. Then Simon will talk more about the top line side there.
Jaakko, please.
Jaakko from SEB. In terms of your margin improvement targets, the strategic actions play an important role. There the modern and CapEx-light retailing is important. Could you give us a bit more kind of a concrete action plans on that? For example, you have now EUR 17 per pax your ancillary. Where could that go? Can you double it? How it kind of sits in the peer context?
I will leave that partly as a cliffhanger to after the break because Simon will talk more about this.
But I do want to say that, you know, based on benchmark, there should be ability to double. Maybe I'll leave it there and leave the rest for Simon.
That's good. Thank you.
Thank you.
There are still questions in the room. First, Joonas.
Thanks, Joonas from OP. Just one on the margin target. I think you have in the slides 6%-7% base case assumption 2029 and 7%-8% if the market conditions are favorable and regulation is favorable. Can you talk a little bit what is a suitable environment to reach the 8% target?
Yeah, I think what we have seen right now is what I would call sort of a stable growth or a measured growth of about 4% in our core market.
Obviously, should we see a demand growth over and beyond that, that would definitely be such a favorable environment. You know, the policy decisions right now around decarbonization are very much being discussed and in flux. You know, without at all trying to sort of second guess what they will be or what they won't be, I just think that this has been a significant addition to costs in the last years. Should there be any change, of course, that could provide both some opportunity, but of course as well some risk from a pure financial perspective.
Joonas from Evli. I'm also referring to this EBIT target bridge. The strategic actions play the most important part on this. I was just wondering, can you comment on your passenger load factor target? What role does it play in these targets?
Because your passenger load factors are still well below 80% outside Q3, whereas before the pandemic you made clearly above 80% passenger load factors on an annual basis.
Yeah, we are not foreseeing sort of significant changes to the current situation. We do see some improvements over time. If you consider, for example, the Atlantic route that has been under some pressure, there has been also lower passenger loads during this year. Maybe we have reached sort of the low point there and, you know, it is starting to rebalance over time again. Some improvements could be through such changes that we have, let's say, recently experienced within our network. Some improvement, but this is not built on sort of a single factor like improving load factors. That is not what is driving this case for the next three to four years.
Are you basically saying that if we would assume that there would be like a very big gain in passenger load factors, then you would easily reach the upper end of this range?
Wouldn't that be somehow reflective of a stronger demand environment over and beyond this 4% CAGR that we are now having in our plans?
Okay, thanks.
I guess there are no questions in the room, but I guess we could take some questions online. The first one is coming from Mark Moilanen from Nordea. You mentioned that your rating was reiterated, but can you talk about how S&P viewed your upcoming investment program? Were there any concerns?
I think my short answer would be not, you know, not specific concerns other than the pacing.
I, you know, I do think that this is also ensuring the long-term sort of viability and the long-term future for Finnair. I think my short answer is no concerns.
A question about the leverage. This is coming from Brian Børsting from Danske. If the leverage of 1-2x target range, is that a target for every year during the strategy period?
Yes, I mean, we have set this for the totality of the strategy period. Certain of the targets, of course, we need to reach sort of at the latest by 2029. We have already reached the 2% leverage target, or we are sort of, we are there as we speak. I think that's a level that we want to maintain.
Yes. Perhaps this is now the last question coming from Samu Wilhelmsson from Nordea.
How soon would you expect to see the effects of the renewed fleet in terms of fuel savings, etc., in your margin and cash flow once the fleet renewal eventually gets ongoing?
Yeah, I mean, obviously for every individual aircraft and as we start flying them, but this is a long-term renewal program. That is why in our financials in this period, they only have a minor impact. Maybe that is one way of answering it.
Yes. Okay. I guess we will now take a short break of roughly 20 minutes so we can continue at 2:50 P.M., so in 22 minutes. Make sure to come back because after the break, we will get a more detailed view on how our strategy will look like in practice. Of course, we will have a panel discussion where we will cover most of the unanswered questions. Stay tuned. Welcome back.
Our next speaker is Simon Large, our Chief Customer Officer, who will share how Finnair is enhancing its customer experience, retail activities, and loyalty. Please, Simon.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a great pleasure to be here on the next leg of this Finnair journey. My name is Simon Large. I am the Chief Customer Officer here at Finnair for the past just over one year. I've just celebrated my first anniversary here. My background is in airlines. I spent 30 years in Asia with Cathay Pacific in a very similar role to the one I have in Finnair. At Cathay Pacific, and indeed here, I've been in charge of or responsible for sales, loyalty, retail, the customer experience, marketing, and the brand. Those are my areas of responsibility. After 30-odd years with Cathay, I returned to the United Kingdom in 2021 during COVID.
Just after returning, I got a call from Finnair asking if I might be interested in joining the Finnair board at the time because they were looking for someone with some Asian customer experience as well as airline experience. That came as something of a surprise. I knew relatively little about Finnair other than its great reputation. I was very happy to accept that challenge. Almost the day that I joined the Finnair board, airspace closed literally on the very day I joined. That represented at the time quite a considerable challenge as well for the two years I did that. Turkka then took over as CEO here.
He immediately expressed an interest very early, I remember, in his time that he wanted to have somebody sitting at the senior table with customer in the title and someone representing customer because I think he foresaw, quite understandably, that this was going to be a key element of our strategy. We had some conversations, and that resulted in me happily accepting the role here and moving to Helsinki, as I say, one year ago. I should just say at the outset, there were a couple of things about the airline whilst I was on the board that seriously impressed me. One is the brand itself. I could see at the time the Finnair brand was an incredibly strong one. Globally, it was so well respected.
The second thing I could see when I was there was the culture and how strong the culture was and how good the culture is and was for running an airline. That is how I felt then. I have to say, I still feel that very strongly today. I can get into some of the reasons for that later. That was a big part in my motivation for coming here and taking up this role. I would just like to say a couple of things about the title of my piece of this presentation. When you have got an airline background like mine, you know in your heart it starts with the core operation, operational excellence. That has to be very strong for you to then think about doing anything else. That has to be the building block on which we build this strategy.
We are, as a team, very clear on that. We know that operational excellence, whether it is the network we have, the aircraft we buy, the reliability or trustworthiness that we promise and deliver, and the customer experience end to end have to work extremely well. That will always be the case, I think, with Finnair. That has to be the priority. Coming off that, clearly what we are saying today is we feel there are new muscles in a sense that we can grow and build in both retail and in loyalty. That is very much part of my brief, and that is very much part of why I am here using my experience to help Finnair on that journey. It would not be appropriate for me to start a presentation without at least thinking about the customer first. That is my job.
That is what I do every day and what I think about. This is no different from that. Turkka talked a little bit about some of these qualities that we know about our core customers. It should be right also to say that our core customer group has changed. We've said that clearly from this group that transited or this very valuable customer that transited through Helsinki from Asia to Europe or Europe to Asia to now this frequent flyer based in this region. It does not mean that all customers do not matter to us. They absolutely do. It is essential that you prioritize a little bit. That is what we have done here.
This group, we have spent quite a bit of time with over the last 12 months trying to really understand, or at least the 12 months I've been involved, trying to really understand who they are and what they care about. This is an ongoing exercise, whether it's through data or whether it's through interviews or just spending time with these people. What we learn or what we know are these things are of utmost importance to them from their airline, and that is us. What our customers, our core customers want from us ultimately is convenience, as in the schedule, the network. We are able to do that whether it's just with direct flights from ourselves or whether it's through our alliance partners with very easy connections.
They also make it very clear they expect us to be reliable, whether it is the on-time performance or indeed when things do not go to plan, that we are very quick to inform them and look after them and care for them and ensure we can get their schedule back on track. I think the third thing that came out very clearly to me, and is one that Pia has talked about and Turkka talked about, is this request for good value. It is very clear here that people want competitive fares. They want a super light, low fare to start with, and they want to be able to build or upgrade their journey as they should wish. This concept of building up choice and enabling choice has become a really important one in terms of how we think about the proposition. They want an underlying quality of end-to-end experience.
Rightly so, Finns have high standards, and so should they. We must provide that. There is a core element of quality throughout whatever ticket you buy. We are committed to that as well, whether it's the aircraft that we have or the lounges or the digital experience that we provide. People like, in a very understated way here, recognition and rewards, like they do everywhere. It is, as I say, a particularly Finnish way, but nonetheless, it is there. If they're providing their loyalty, they want to be recognized for it, and rightly so. I guess the last component of this is people appreciate the Finnair brand, the Finnair touch. They often say, "We like coming on your aircraft. It feels like we're coming home." That says a lot, I think, about how we provide our service and the customer experience that we design.
I wanted just to put this out there because this, in a sense, is our commandments. It's what we think about and how we prioritize, to some degree, our investment and our time when we go forward in terms of the customer experience that we're trying to develop. I want to get into this topic of the day, which is how retail and loyalty will deliver on our profitability targets. I will just say at the outset, this is CapEx Light. Don't get me wrong. This is absolutely CapEx Light.
There is a real investment here that we have already made in terms of the people we are starting to think about putting in place, the organization structures we put in place, and I'm a reflection of that, the skills that we need to develop and are developing, the technology that we have but are still continuing to develop, and the partnerships. Those are all key components. They are CapEx Light, but they are still hard to do. You cannot do it overnight. As you get better and better with all of those things, I think the results improve accordingly. I will go through these individual elements one by one and hopefully shed some light on how we believe we think we can do this. Turkka mentioned, and rightly so, the importance of the Finnair Plus program.
This is a program that already captures, we think, a lot of people who fly frequently in this region, if not all people who fly relatively frequently in this region. As Turkka rightly said, whilst we have 5 million people signed up, only about half of that are actually active. Even then, of those that are active, that only requires you to do one piece of activity every 18 months and you qualify. I think, based on my experience, we can really improve this activation. We can really make this more compelling, more interesting. With that comes revenue opportunities and profit. Just the program itself, before we get into beyond flying or the opportunities beyond flying, I think have real opportunities for improvement. We get into the idea of building loyalty and business beyond travel.
This, again, as has been said, is a well-understood model in the industry. It just so happens that Finnair are not as far ahead as many other airlines have been for various reasons. We really see a lot of potential here to create possibly the best loyalty program in Finland, maybe the best loyalty program in the region. There is no reason for us not to have that ambition if we develop the right partnerships and put the right focus on this. We have now got our partner, Avios, with us, who are a recognized European currency and global currency. I think that gives this real strength. It is still early days, and we are still working with them very hard in terms of building these partnerships. There is a lot of potential underlying here in terms of building a better proposition for Finnish customers and this region.
We have a target of 3 million, which I think, again, is very realistic, is very achievable. Every time you build it, you have a new partner, you build a new partner. That, in essence, is a CapEx Light investment as you get more earning and burning opportunities for Avios. This is an area where we're very confident that we can move quite quickly and make real improvements. I want to get into the retail component. Retailing, as Turkka said, is completely reliant on the outset on having the right distribution channels. That starts with your direct channels, your website, and, of course, your app. Apps are beginning to be developed more and more quickly, and people are showing a preference for the app in terms of buying on it.
It's also how you distribute your content to online travel agencies, to corporate customers. The great foundation that we have here is 72%, as Turkka said, of our business in this region and in Finland is done through these modern channels. That is the platform you have to have in order to think about retailing. Retailing is all about how you dynamically price, how you can package products, personalize products for different customers. Within those opportunities, as I will show, there are huge opportunities for huge potential for growth. Outside of Finland, in Asia and North America, the picture is not as modern. It should be said that the growth numbers are significant. We are seeing year-on-year growth of 15% in Asia of modern channel share, and then we are seeing a 10% growth in the USA.
That says to me, within a few years, we're going to have global coverage with modern channels to enable us to sell in a modern way wherever we want to. That is the platform you have to have to start even thinking about retailing. Where we are pioneers is in this concept of bundling or combies, as we call them. We launched the first combi offer in September this year, where we put together the Wi-Fi and the seat and added to the ticket. With that packaging, what you're saying is to the customer, "Look, you get a small discount if you buy these things together." We're already seeing a real uptick in terms of demand for those kinds of products. We know from other industries how, if you do this well, how popular they can be.
We also know that we can offer these different types of packages at different stages in a customer journey. Again, we are at the very early stages of this retailing journey, but we're very confident that there's a lot of opportunity here for us to build our business. The confidence is based on some results. We have seen a 10% year-on-year growth in ancillaries, as Turkka said, from a very low start. It now matches our cargo business. We are starting to see major growth in our app. Again, we plan to really focus on that and make that a real channel of choice because we know that's what our customers want. We've seen real pricing improvements with dynamic pricing. That's the pricing you can provide any time of day or night based upon availability, based upon even customer.
We've seen this improvement in pricing on bundling and indeed on our individual ancillaries. All of these indicators are positive. It gives us belief that this is an area we can continue to develop and build as a strength for the airline. That confidence is also borne through in the fundamentals of the customer experience. As I said at the start, you couldn't do this without that confidence in your core product. When we do things well, as Turkka said, the feedback is extremely positive. We have made some very good investments in the A350, in our new lounges at Helsinki. We have extremely good service on our aircraft. Our crew consistently get good scores from NPS. All of that adds up, I think, to a very good reason to be positive about our ability to deliver.
Today, of course, we've announced some new destinations in our network. This also is a key element to giving customers more choice and driving up ancillary opportunities. Our network team are constantly looking for these new opportunities, ways to be creative, ways to keep the customer interested, but also ways to be convenient in their lives and that these are places we know that people need to go to for business as well as for leisure. Just today, that announcement will have generated a huge amount of interest in our websites and in communication amongst them. This is what people are asking for all the time. For a small country like this to be able to offer this kind of network is really fantastic.
It would not be right for me to talk about assets without, as Turkka said, talking about how we develop our partnerships. This is another key area that we have to focus. We have some very strong partnerships. We punch above our weight for a small airline, whether it is Oneworld, whether it is these joint business partnerships across Siberia, where we are the biggest European airline into Japan, across the Atlantic with this enormous air route where we are also participating very strongly, and even now into the Middle East with Qatar. Again, evidence that we participate well in partnerships, we can do partnerships well, and that is such an important component. We also have very strong local partners. We are building partners in our loyalty business. Of course, I mentioned Avios.
It also would not be right for me not to mention Aurinko matkat because they are producing happiness on a major scale every year with 230-odd thousand of our Finnish friends going on holiday with them and enjoying the experience enormously. That is a bridge, perhaps. The Aurinko happiness story is a good bridge into talking about brand. I mentioned at the start that when I joined the airline, we lost. It was almost simultaneous to losing the airspace advantage. It felt at the time a little bit like a kind of existential crisis for Finnair to try and find out this was our competitive edge and we had lost it. I remember thinking, whilst I was there, there is much more to this airline than just geographic advantage. There is much, much more.
Coming in from the outside, maybe it was something that I could see that maybe Finns could not see so strongly. I did not have a language for it. I could not explain exactly what it was, but I could see evidence, whether it was the way people got stuff done, whether it was the humility, whether it was the equality, whether it was the positivity as well that you could feel amongst my colleagues. Having come here and spent some time, we said we needed to rethink our brand. We needed to get our confidence back for this strategy, for the future, for the next chapter of the Finnair story. Quite quickly, it became clear there was a term for this that we are all relatively familiar with, and that is this one, this Finnish happiness concept.
For me, this was a gift because I remember thinking as the team, this captures a lot of the spirit that we deliver as an airline. We have this. It is authentic. It is natural. We can deliver this to the world, and the world wants it. For my role, trying to glue together these assets that we have that I have explained, that we have talked about, these proof points, you need to package it with a brand that gives people belief, that gives people conviction, that gives people competitive edge. We will relaunch our brand in 2026. It is not exactly under this terminology, but this is the spirit behind what we are going to do. The relaunch will not be at first hugely visual. It will not involve massive livery change. There will be very gradual changes to the customer experience.
But I think where we'll see it to begin with is in the motivation and the spirit of the people in Finnair because everyone is excited by this and motivated by it. I honestly think the world wants more of it. It is a great platform on which we can build the strategy and achieve the commercial targets that we've set ourselves, but also a great way of bringing our people together and delivering a great experience for our customers. That's where I will stop at this point. I think we will now go to a panel discussion. Thank you.
Thank you, Simon. Indeed, now we move into our panel discussion on Finnair's strategic direction. The session will be moderated by my colleague, Aron McGarvey, Head of Network Strategy and Development.
He will guide the conversation and ensure we cover key topics from today's presentations. Please, Aron. Thanks.
Thank you, Erkka. Good afternoon on a very typical Finnish November afternoon. Thank you for joining us. Happiness around. And welcome to our Capital Markets Day update panel discussion. As introduced, my name is Aron McGarvey. I lead the Network Strategy and Development team here at Finnair, responsible for our longer-term network development and also our fleet planning efforts. Today, I'm pleased to be joined by Christine Rovelli, our Chief Revenue Officer, Jaakko Schildt, our Chief Operating Officer, and Simon Large, our Chief Customer Officer. Excuse me. On this multi-legged journey we're about to take, we will explore how Finnair is shaping its strategic direction, building operational resilience, and navigating an increasingly complex regulatory landscape, all with the aim of delivering sustainable customer-centric growth. We look forward to sharing insights with you.
Let's get started. Our first destination is our strategic direction and execution. Christine, Finnair is entering a new strategy phase. How are you optimizing route profitability and network design considering the loss of Asia overflight advantage?
Thank you. That's a popular question, I know, from this morning or earlier today. It's important for us to remember that airspace actually closes all the time. We have geopolitical events that will close airspace, for example, over the Middle East. That happens quite often. We've seen some of that here in the region, in the Baltics, with airspace being closed because of drones and things like that. Actually, when we look at what has happened in Russia, the only distinct factors that set it apart from other normal airspace closures that we would normally deal with on an operational level is that it has lasted for so long, first of all.
Second, because it really did impact our biggest strategic advantage, which was the fact that we were the most efficient carrier, the shortest distance for most connecting traffic from Europe to Asia. Those are the two things that we had to work with. On a network level, we deal with constraints all the time. This was just another constraint, albeit a larger one, that the team had to take into account when they started looking at where people were going and how we could get them there. In a sense, we just looked, as we always do, at where people are going. How did they get there now? Do we have a competitive advantage if we add service there? How can we get there with the fleet that we have? You have seen we have managed to reorient our network.
We did deploy some A330s with partners, as Turkka said earlier. We had some flying for Qatar, and we have some flying with Qantas now. We also sent some of the A330s across the North Atlantic. Those were in conjunction, again, with our partners. We now feed American Airlines hub in Dallas, and we also feed Alaska Airlines hub in Seattle. We also added some service, as you will have seen this morning, to some European destinations. We are growing a little bit also in this region. We are doing that with a combination of the aircraft that we already have. You will see that two of those destinations are served via two cities that we serve today. We are also doing some tactical wet leasing, which is very short-term capacity addition in order to let us get those routes stand up and functioning.
Jaakko, how would you add to that question from the operational side of the view?
I think the Finnair team, we really demonstrated during the tough times how agile we can be. I feel that some of the things about the team pull through. I mean, we are 102 years old and actually the most agile airline. In a couple of weeks, we were able to redistribute our network, redo our network, and really search and find the new solutions, what the company has never done earlier. We did it safely, and we did it within Finnair standards, what we are very proud of.
Yeah, I was there for both and remember it distinctly. It was an interesting week, let's put it that way. Christine, a lot of questions today around fleet.
Maybe you can give us some of the key milestones for the narrow-body fleet renewal and midterm capacity plan and how you think they support long-term efficiency.
Sure. Newer aircraft tend to be more efficient because they require less maintenance initially than the older aircraft. At the same time, older aircraft do tend to have a lower capital cost. It is all about us balancing these two things. Right now, I think, as you saw on the initial pages, our narrow-body fleet is getting older. The oldest of those is knocking on the door of 24 at this point. That is the fleet we are focusing on now in the near term, which is the A319, A320 aircrafts.
At the same time, we've talked about the supply chain disruptions that everybody is seeing in this industry, not only with the OEMs, Boeing and Airbus, but also with the parts manufacturers. We kind of have a double impact. The older fleet requires a bit more maintenance, which requires more spare parts, which are less available or they take more time. The newer fleet requires parts to build them, which are a little bit in shorter supply as well. Those slots are a bit further out than we would like them to be for the replacement. We have to look at a balance of what we can do now, which is, like I said, the tactical wet leasing, what we can do in the next few years, which is the midterm capacity solution.
We're looking at smaller aircraft, let's say like E190 size, ATR size to fill in those gaps. At the end of that period, we're looking at a newer aircraft. We're trying to remain flexible. We've learned a lot of lessons about being agile that I think we will put to good use here. Between all of those things, we will be able to serve the growth and the network that we're planning on, as well as the core customer needs that we're looking at here.
Definitely. We've spoken a lot about growth and capital-light growth. One way of doing that we've spoken is through a lot of the partnerships. Opening for a bit of a discussion between the three of you, we'll start with you, Simon. How do strategic partnerships and joint businesses contribute to the network strength and profitability?
They're huge contributors. Our ability to serve Asia as well as we do across to Japan, particularly post airspace closure, has been enormously helped by that partnership. I would say our ability to diversify destinations after, again, airspace closure across the Atlantic into the Middle East has been enormously helped by partnership. It is an essential part of our armory in a way that we are good at it and that we contribute to those.
Christine, anything to add?
In addition to the airline partnerships that we have, we also have, and I'll hand this over quickly to Jaakko, partnerships with our major airports that we serve. Of course, we do a lot of development work improving the passenger experience. How can we make the connections easier?
We've seen some of our competitors, even I think this morning, having to extend their minimum connection time at their hub, which is not something you want to do from an aircraft efficiency standpoint, nor from a passenger experience standpoint. We've actually been able to work very effectively together with Finavia and some of the other airports to ensure that our customers are able to make those connections in short enough time that we can make best use of the aircraft that we have. I guess we also have some retail and other partnerships. I know, Simon, that you've covered as well.
Yeah. I mean, it is big, big, large value chain. And often, I mean, we talk about airline operations and network planning and actually then our partners separately, but it is actually one big value chain.
Like the partnership with Finavia, we have a great airport. We have a great connection airport. What is rated? It is really the best connection experience many, many times. It is not only the Helsinki Airport. This week, I was working together with Finavia in Rovaniemi, where our Lapland traffic is really booming. We have much more flight up there. It is part of the very important value chain that the airport works. Also, I would like to mention our partnership together with Norra, who flies the Embraer aircraft and ATRs. I mean, Norra delivers excellent on-time performance, excellent cost, and superior customer experience. That is something that we are also very proud of, that partnership, that it delivers what is expected.
That is a nice segue to our next destination, core destination, which is operational resilience and safety. Jaakko, safety is a cornerstone of Finnair operations.
Could you share how this commitment shapes our day-to-day decision-making?
Okay. Thank you, Aron. The safety conversation often makes me kind of emotional. I think there are two sides of emotions. One thing is that I am extremely proud of the 102 years history of our safety record and reputation and brand. The second emotion, what comes into my mind is really that being humble in the front of the fact that this is done every day, for every flight, by every Finnair employee, and also including all the partners' employees. We have a number of destinations where we do not do the ground handling ourselves, for example. Part of the maintenance is outsourced. It is something that is really humbling that we cannot lose the focus. We cannot take the overconfidence approach. We cannot become complacent. It has to be done by everybody again and again.
One of the most visible operational resilience targets is on-time performance, one that all of our customers cherish. Finnair is doing very well on its on-time performance and regularity of flights. Could you please explain what kind of impact this has on Finnair customer satisfaction and, more importantly, as well, cost competiti veness?
I mean, that is really a key. Today we saw on the presentations, we saw actually our performance from this year. I just want to share it. Sorry, it's outside of the script, but like yesterday, we had a 98.4% arrival punctuality. Connection reliability was 100%. Half of our connection, all passengers, all made the connections on time. This is something which is a key for our customer. As Simon mentioned, I mean, there is no point to build any retail activity unless these hygiene things are in place.
It's extremely important. It also contributes to the cost that Pia mentioned, that the first time right, the lean principle, it's an enormous cost driver that when we execute the operation as planned, that's actually the best unit cost what it gives. Also, I would like to mention that often the operational reliability, I mean, it comes to a COO. Unless we are not having the end-to-end process and continuous improvement approach towards our network planning colleagues, the system doesn't work. It's once again a big, big team effort to make the operation run.
Simon, is there anything you'd like to add from the customer side on this?
I think I could only repeat how close NPS runs against on-time performance. That has to be, as I say, the core building block.
If you're getting that right, it gives you the opportunity to do so many other things. Likewise, like I think I said, we spend a lot of time also investing in customer care when things don't go to plan. We had a demonstration outside of AI and how that can begin to do an amazing job, I think, to assist. That's exciting, I think, for us. That means the levels of customer service, particularly with complex schedules, complex bookings, can start to be addressed at scale. That's something you can't do with humans today. When you can get that kind of capability in place, I think it gives us huge confidence that we can deliver a consistently good experience all the time.
I think complex is a good way of explaining it.
It's another nice segue to our next destination and up-and-coming destination, sustainability and its effects on the aviation industry. Christine, environmental regulation is increasing costs. How is Finnair managing this transition operationally, commercially, and technologically?
It's important to understand that it's increasing costs, but only in certain jurisdictions. We see increased costs for sure in Europe. We do not see that so much in some of the regions where our competitors originate. I will not name names, but some of them are to the west. What happens then is that it's an uneven playing field. Of course, the airline industry is extremely competitive. We compete on all kinds of different variables.
When you have the type of cost that Pia was alluding to earlier that will come to us and that are coming to us now in terms of using sustainable aviation fuels, in terms of noise reduction and emissions reductions and things like that, and they're not evenly enforced among the competitors, that automatically makes it much more difficult to take the steps as an industry that we need to take. We have a two-pronged approach. Finnair is doing what it can on its own. I think, Turkka, you mentioned we are reducing weight on the aircraft. We're taxiing on one engine. We're doing continuous descent approaches. We're looking at the sustainability and the recycling and things of products that we can have on board.
We're going to be doing some things in Simon's area with respect to food waste and other elements of the onboard service to further that part of sustainability. The second thing we're doing is we're working with some partners here in Finland on development of eSAF measures or eSAF technology, which is probably the next step forward that we will need to take, as an industry. We are also working through industry bodies. We're working through the European Airline Association. We're working through IATA to try to get the conversation on the global level so that we can all, as an industry, make the changes that we need to make so that as an industry, we can deliver on the targets that we've set for ourselves.
Yeah, it's a good approach. I'd ask the panelists to put on their inspirational shoes now.
If you could leave the investors with one message about Finnair's future, what would that be? And we'll start with Simon.
We'll deliver on our strategy. I'm confident of that. We have great capability, great determination. There's a super lean operation here, which I'm so impressed by coming in. People work together incredibly well. If you give them clear goals and targets, the sense I have with Finnish culture is people get stuff done. That's one of the reasons why I was so keen to be part of this journey and one of the reasons why I'm so confident we'll get it done.
Christine.
We're back. We're growing. I can't wait to show you where we're going to take you next.
I'm very confident that we will bring and give the Finnair to the next generation in a much better shape.
If I think about this strategy and what it brings to Finnair, I mean, if I compare that to an effort, what we did from 2021, 2022, simply keeping the company alive and floating, I mean, that effort and power, what we have in Finnair people, makes me very, very confident that we are in a good shape than to give the Finnair even better shape to the next generation.
Thank you to the panelists. That is all my questions. Now it is over to you out in the audience. If you have any questions in the room, please raise your hand. Otherwise, if you are online, use the webcast chat. Okay, we will have one online first. SAS strategy on Copenhagen hub, together with Stockholm, Arlanda, and Oslo airports, already feel the pressure on reduced growth due to airlines' focus more on flying in and out of Copenhagen.
Both airports are working hard to attract airlines, especially on long haul. How can this scenario where Copenhagen is expected to outperform the other main airports in the Nordics impact on Finnair growth strategy at your hub in Helsinki? Do you foresee any changes in Finnair's current ownership structure going forward? This is going to Christine.
The ownership structure I can't comment on because it's an owner issue. Insofar as Copenhagen is a growing hub, I mean, that's something that we've been seeing already, something we expect. We monitor all of our competitors' hubs as they monitor ours quite closely. Sometimes hubs grow. Sometimes they pull back. Sometimes we see different trade-offs between, especially when we talk about SAS. They used to have three main hubs. They've largely retrenched into Copenhagen. We do what we do. We see what they do. We respond to it competitively.
They do the same for us. I would say that we focused on the core customers that we have here in this market, of which there are many with many diverse needs. Then we focus on our partners and the network that allows us to serve as well. Does it have an impact? Of course. I mean, it's a competitive landscape. We're always constantly tweaking to meet the demands of the market. Is it something that worries us? I would say no.
I agree. Anyone in the room over here?
Yes. Jaakko from SEB. You are now rebuilding and continue to build the network and adding new destinations.
Could you, as a team, kind of a bit of elaborate the work and decision-making behind choosing a new destination and kind of addressing all the risks that relate to what kind of a survey you are doing, etc.?
I can start. The basic question in network you always ask yourself is if you have one aircraft, where would you send it? Right? If we have one, where would we send it? Will you send it where it makes the most money? Now you have two. What would you do then? You say, if I have four aircraft and I have one hub, what combinations of destinations can I start serving that would make a lot of money? From there, you start to build your network. What we are constantly doing, we have a long list and a short list.
We monitor, as I said before, where people are going, how they get there now. Do we have a competitive advantage in serving that route if we do not serve it today? How can we best take advantage of that? That is how we decide. Of course, there are some airports that are slot constrained that we would love to serve more, but we actually cannot. That is why you have your B team, your B list of destinations. You are always kind of optimizing between those two things.
Yeah, I mean, the only comment I would make, and Christine is a much bigger expert than I, but in my years, I have thought it is science, but there is a little bit of art. I have seen some great studies done and some dead certs fail. I have seen some trials be great successes.
I mean, that isn't always the rule. It's an interesting world trying to work out what will be successful when it comes to building a network. These days, there's an awful lot of data that you can utilize to give you more confidence. I think the other point to make is I think there are sort of almost CapEx light ways in which you can launch networks too without putting heavy investment into the infrastructure on the ground at the other end so that if it doesn't work. There are ways of trialing these things now that if it's not working, you can pull it out and try something else. You can be more agile. Is that fair to say?
SECs do that quite often. You'll see them launch a route and then pull it back.
For example, of some of the destinations we listed this morning, there are two that we're going to be serving via destinations we serve already. What that allows us to do is it allows us to go after a market that's small enough that we wouldn't actually put an entire airplane on it, but still big enough to be attractive with some service. We're trying things like that to try to make sure that we cover as much of the market as we possibly can with the assets that we have on a cost-effective basis.
Maybe to supplement, I mean, the new destination is a big, big team effort. I mean, there are always the short list and then what operation contributes into it that, okay, what is the condition at the airport? How is the payload range? Can we take off?
What's the market for the ground handling? Does the airport need specific permits? Does it need specific skills for pilots, special training and things and so on? Of course, all this information and then this collected together and in great detail put into the model, what would be the cost operating that route? Very detailed work.
Continuing a bit on the same topic and perhaps a question earlier here regarding the competition in Scandinavia and the SAS Copenhagen hub. This morning, you announced this Stavanger route. Do you see kind of growth pockets in the Nordics or in Scandinavia where you could kind of position as an Asian network carrier for the people in Scandinavia?
You mean carrying traffic?
Competing on Scandinavian customers toward Asia.
Oh, sure. Yeah. We've been doing that since even before COVID. We had some really good connecting traffic from the Nordics to Asia.
Now it's changed a little bit. Our network has changed and the SAS network has changed and the competitive landscape has changed a little bit. We've seen long-haul carriers from Asia start service into Stockholm. That's changed a little bit. Yeah, we're always sort of poking around and trying to find where the demand is and going after it.
Thank you.
Thanks.
This is Pasi from Nordea. What is your feeling regarding end demand currently? I mean, we're looking at the kind of the situation in Finland. We have a rising unemployment, declining housing prices, and then probably a bit weaker consumer confidence. Also, on other markets, there have been kind of problems related to inflation and consumers' downtrading, their consumer behavior. What's your feeling? Are we now currently in a better position today as a year ago?
What's your feeling? Is that things are going to be a bit better next year than currently on this day? Thanks.
You, me. Okay, I can see. Again, it's not new that we see all kinds of impact on customer demand. Sometimes you see it coming and sometimes you don't. What we can do and what we are doing is we're constantly, like Pia said, kind of working on the cost structure, working on the agility, making sure that if something's not working, we pull it back immediately. We don't have cost-setting there that we don't want to continue to carry if demand falls. That having been said, in Q3, we've seen some impact on the North Atlantic. It's important to remember that the growth in that market slowed. The market itself is not shrinking. It's still a growing market.
Finland, we haven't seen any impact, but we're always kind of preparing for those types of things. Of course, you remember you don't buy a ticket for tomorrow. You buy a ticket for maybe a few months from now or not more than a year from now. I can explain why later. Anyway, you're always buying tickets further in advance. We have a view now of what it's going to look like going forward. As we've said, I mean, we're pretty comfortable with where we are right now.
Maybe to supplement, it was mentioned earlier today that especially after the pandemic, we can see that I think the trend isn't similar. The consumers, when there was a period that travel was simply not possible, we also see that it's prioritized, that it's on the household spend that it's prioritized.
It's not 100% following as it was before the pandemic.
Maybe if I may continue regarding the issue coming from the end demand. So when looking at the current bookings and your outlook for next spring and next summer, are you confident regarding the 2% growth on RASK for 2026 next year?
That is what we're planning for, for sure. The booking curve has come in quite significantly. I wouldn't know right now what summer looks like anyway, but what we've been planning based on the models and the behavior that we can see today, I think we're going to stay with that view, yeah.
Excellent. Thanks.
We might then take one last question online. This one's, oh, sorry.
Thank you, Joonas from OP. I think we touched upon this already a little, but business travel took quite a hit from the pandemic.
More recently, there seemed to be quite a broad-based call back to the office. Have you seen business travel coming back? How is the level versus pre-pandemic levels?
I mean, work-based travel is a big part of our customer base, for sure. It remains robust, I would say. There is a lot of, and you are right, post-pandemic, there was a big bounce back. There is no evidence that that is going to change anytime soon, I do not think. There was talk, of course, of people working more from home, but I think we are still seeing quite a lot of the requirements to meet face-to-face. I think that it remains a very strong segment for us to serve.
Yeah. When we talk about corporate traffic, we have to be careful what we mean because we do not always know. We can predict sometimes based on behavior.
If you do not have a Saturday night stay, you are probably a corporate customer. When we look at corporate traffic, we look at corporate contract traffic, which is typically Finland-based. When you say corporate overall, it is harder for us to define, but what Simon is talking about is what we can visibly see from the corporate contracts that we have.
All right. Thank you.
Okay. One last question online to Christine. As already mentioned, Finnair has recently increased flights to Japan, especially during the summer season. Are there any possible to have flights to Nagoya during the winter season and to make the Osaka route daily in the winter as well? Also, without A330s, is there any possibility of resuming services to Fukuoka and Sapporo? I can answer all those, but I will let you.
I was going to say, is this someone looking for a job in the network team or?
It's no one from our team. It's okay.
Fair enough. Just making sure. In terms of increased service, we will always put more aircraft where we see the potential for profit. We will be taking one more A350 next year, but that's going to be very late in the year. It won't be deployed in 2026. Wait and see. It's all I can say. If there's demand and it's profitable, we will certainly put it on the list.
Excellent. That concludes our panel discussion and question time. I would like to thank the three panelists here for their time and their insights. I hope everyone here found it insightful as well. I'll hand back over to Erkka.
Thank you.
Thank you.
To summarize, today's message is, please welcome back Turkka Kuusisto for closing reflections. Thank you.
Thank you, Erkka, and thank you all for joining us today. I really hope that you found this long afternoon useful and time well spent. I tried to reflect some of my own thoughts and feelings. I'm super happy and excited that we have now the right strategy for the company after a difficult era of double crisis and, of course, very rapid rebound when the markets opened since the COVID-19 was left behind us. As you've seen today, the Finnair team has done a fantastic job when it comes to pivoting the network, reallocating the fleet. We had enough self-discipline to plan this strategy properly. We took enough time.
I'm not famous for my patience, but I think that it's better to discuss the strategy today with you when we feel very comfortable that we are also capable of delivering what's included, be it on the customer side, be it on the operation side, and how that translates into the financial performance. Today, you saw half of my team. I'm extremely privileged that I have such a great team with such vast experience, either in the industry or a lot of experiences from other industries. We are ready for the challenge. It's not only about the executive board, but the full Finnair team will be working very hard when it comes to achieving the goals. Because at the end of the day, strategy is not valuable if we are not capable of delivering on it.
To summarize the key messages, we do have a very clear customer-centric strategy that is built on operational excellence, as Simon extremely well explained it. That opens up new avenues, new revenue sources, and also enables us to boost our profit margins because the development in retail and loyalty sections of our commercial strategy are rather capital-light and not investment-free, but they do not require additions into the fleet. Key KPIs related to RASK or revenue development should be moving favorably to the right direction over the next eight quarters, as Pia already communicated. Yes, the plan is rather ambitious, but it must be. From 6%-8% EBIT margin by the end of this decade or 2029. It requires, of course, a lot of hard work internally to execute on the strategy.
I'm more than convinced that with this team and with the wider Finnair colleague population, we are capable of doing it. We will continue to develop this one crew thinking. It's very important from multiple perspectives. By improving the engagement, improving the leadership, securing that we stay among the top employers in Finland so that we can get also access to new talent, we are capable of building an organization culture that enables us to preserve those great qualities of this company and 102 years of legacy: cost competitiveness, punctuality, regularity, on-time performance, and safety always. Finally, we are here for long-term value creation and delivery. It's been already 102 years, and I guess, and as Jaakko said it extremely well, we want to hand this company to the next generation in better shape. We'll be here also for the next 100 years.
Thanks again for joining us today and looking forward to seeing you on board Finnair. Thank you.
Thank you for joining us today, both in person and online. We have covered Finnair's strategy, financial targets, and our commitment to customer-centric growth. We hope you leave with a clear view of where Finnair will be heading and how we'll get there. All presentation material will be available on our IR website. We'd love to hear your feedback on the event, so please scan the QR code on the screen or click the link on the webcast to share your feedback. It helps us a lot. For those here at the venue, we invite you to enjoy a Finnair Kitchen experience and some mingling after the event. Our Head of Product Development, Juha Stenholm, has prepared us a menu that is served in our business class on our long-haul flights.
Safe travels, everyone, and thank you again for joining the event. Thank you.