Initially, the two A330's will be wet-leased (aircraft, crew, insurance) to the Qantas (aircraft and crew) for two years, after that the jets will be on a dry lease (aircraft only) to the Australian airline for 2 and half years.
The deal has been struck as Finnair has been hard hit by the closure of Russian airspace which has resulted in longer reroutes for some of its long-haul flights. These A330s loads have been limited because of the increased time and range the reroutes are range limited by the rerouting.
During the wet lease period, the aircraft will be deployed in Qantas’ network on routes from Sydney and Singapore as well as Sydney and Bangkok. Finnair pilots will fly scheduled Finnair flights from Helsinki to Singapore and from Helsinki to Bangkok; then, they will continue flying scheduled Qantas flights between Singapore, Bangkok and Sydney before returning to their home base in Helsinki.
The collaboration supports the efficient and profitable deployment of Finnair’s A330 fleet. Since the closure of the Russian airspace, Finnair has built a geographically more balanced network, as avoiding the Russian airspace lengthened the flight times between Finnair’s Helsinki hub and its Asian destinations.
"We are delighted to expand our collaboration with our oneworld partner Qantas. This agreement enables us to fully deploy our A330 fleet in profitable operations”, says Antti Tolvanen, Senior Vice President, Network and revenue management at Finnair.