The consultations will start on November 23 and end in early January 2023. By the end of next year, the services will be subcontracted to partners.
Partners are already providing in-flight services on the airline's routes to and from Hong Kong, India and Singapore, as well as on the routes between Copenhagen and Doha and Stockholm and Doha.
According to Topi Manner, the chief executive of Finnair, the goal is to find a savings solution together with our cabin crew. We need a genuine will from the negotiators to find solutions that would allow us to continue in-flight service with our crew and avoid redundancies. Discussion on alternative solutions is a very important part of the change negotiations process. The airline has discussed cost-cutting measures with its staff throughout the autumn, including changes to cabin crews' utilisation efficiency, layover hotel rules and per-hour pay rules for long flights. It said that an agreement was reached with some employee groups but not with the cabin crew in Finland.
Finnair reminded on Wednesday that it had suffered significant losses during the coronavirus epidemic and that its ability to recover them has been undermined by the closure of Russian airspace. The airline's flights from Russia to Asia have been extended because of the airspace closure.
The airline had a comparable operating loss of 182 million euro for the first three quarters of the year, after suffering losses of around 470 million euros in 2021 and almost 600 million euros in 2020.
Helsingin Sanomat reported on Wednesday that the subcontracting plans came as a shock to the cabin crew at Finnair.