Finnair is to almost ground its entire fleet on February 1st and 2nd as a wave of political strikes hit Finland in response to government plans to dilute workers rights.
More and more trade unions are announcing strike action which will run from late January into early February. The various strikes are set to seriously impact day to day life throughout Finland.
In what is being compared to the closest thing to a general strike that Finland has seen since 1917, Finnair says it will be impossible to run most of its flights owing to strikes by various airport unions.
Over the first two days of February, Finnair will cancel around 550 flights. By comparison, the Helsinki-based carrier normally operates around 280 flights per day.
Finnair will attempt to operate a very small number of flights during the strike but the airline warned baggage loading and inflight catering would be severely affected.
For passengers who are due to connect through Helsinki, Finnair says it has begun the process of rebooking passengers on flights operated by other airlines that avoid Finland.
“We will do our very best to offer a suitable flight option to as many customers as possible, but the number of alternative flights is limited,” commented Jari Paajanen, Finnair’s VP of the flight operations centre.
“We ask customers to kindly wait for the rerouting from us, as our customer service team is busier than usual and queue times can be long,” Paaianen continued.
