Starting 2 May 2022, Finnair customers can travel between Turku and Helsinki and Tampere and Helsinki in Finland either by air or with a new kind of bus connection that smoothly links to and from connecting flights from Helsinki Airport. Flights from/to Turku and Tampere are operated in the early morning and late evening, allowing for smooth connections to and from Finnair’s network in Europe. During the daytime, Finnair offers a bus connection between Turku/Tampere and Helsinki Airport, and the bus ticket is combined with the flight reservation. The bus connections to/from Tampere are already on sale at finnair.com and the bus connections to/from Turku are available soon.
Combining different modes of transport will reduce the carbon footprint of these domestic routes. Multimodal travel chains are a part of the toolkit for reducing the CO2 footprint of aviation.
“The morning and late evening flight connections to Turku and Tampere will return to our schedule from the beginning of May, but we also want to offer seamless connections to our afternoon flights from Helsinki Airport, in a sustainable way. Smooth customer experience and connection reliability have been key drivers in the design. Connection times at Helsinki Airport are typically 60–90 minutes, depending on the connecting flight,” says Perttu Jolma, Finnair’s VP of Traffic Planning.
The bus connection is operated by the Korsisaari bus company, with high-quality coaches that run 100% biodiesel. A one-way bus ride produces more than 1,000 kilogrammes less CO2 than a one-way flight on these routes. A smooth bus service with guaranteed flight connections is an option for reducing the carbon footprint also for those customers, who would otherwise arrive at the airport by car.
The bus route runs from Turku and Tampere airports to the bus stations at the city centres, and from there to Helsinki Airport and back. Those arriving at Helsinki Airport by bus have access to priority check-in and security check, enabling a quick transfer to a connecting flight. When changing from a flight to a bus connection at Helsinki Airport, customers will receive their checked baggage among the first ones. Finnair also guarantees connections in the event of traffic disruptions.
