The consultations will begin on November 23 and end in early January 2023. The services are going to be subcontracted to partners by the end of next year.
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.
The goal is to find a savings solution together with our cabin crew, said Topi Manner, chief executive of Finnair. We need to have a genuine will from the negotiators to find solutions that would allow us to continue in-flight service with our crew and avoid redundancies. The discussion on alternative solutions is a vital part of the change negotiations process. The airline has discussed cost-cutting measures with its staff throughout the autumn, proposing changes to cabin crews' utilisation efficiency, layover hotel rules and per-hour pay rules for long flights. An agreement was reached with some employee groups but not with the cabin crew in Finland, it said.
Finnair reminded on Wednesday that it had racked up significant losses during the coronaviruses and that its ability to recover them has been undermined by the closure of Russian airspace. The airspace closure has significantly extended what was once the strategic cornerstone of the airline, flights over Russia to Asia.
In the first three quarters of the year, the airline had a comparable operating loss of 182 million euros, after suffering losses of 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.