Finnair reported a solid improvement in traffic performance in December 2025, benefiting from a comparison period in 2024 that was heavily affected by industrial action.
The airline carried 982,800 passengers, up 6.0% year on year. Growth was strongest on North Atlantic and Asian routes, with clear increases in European traffic and modest growth domestically. Passenger numbers declined in Middle Eastern traffic.
Capacity, measured in available seat kilometres (ASK), increased by 8.5%, reflecting the end of industrial action and additional frequencies to Dallas, several Asian destinations, and Lapland. European and domestic capacity also grew, while Middle Eastern capacity declined following the end of Finnair’s cooperation with Qatar Airways on Stockholm–Copenhagen–Doha services in mid-January 2025. Including wet lease operations, total capacity rose by 7.7%.
Traffic performance, measured in revenue passenger kilometres (RPK), increased by 6.9%, with growth across all regions except the Middle East. The passenger load factor declined by 1.1 percentage points to 76.3%, improving in European and Middle Eastern traffic but falling on domestic, North Atlantic and Asian routes.
Cargo performance was particularly strong, with total cargo tonnes up 11.7% and revenue cargo tonne kilometres increasing by 12.8%.
Operational reliability also improved significantly. On-time performance reached 76.8% of flights arriving as scheduled, compared with 62.8% in December 2024, when weather disruption and industrial action weighed heavily on punctuality.