The airline replaced its midday flight to the two cities with coach services in an effort to curb the carbon dioxide emissions on the routes.
Finnair's Director of Operations, Perttu Jolma, said the low passenger volumes mean the flights produce more carbon dioxide emissions per passenger than many other short routes in the network, making road and rail transport the more sustainable link between these cities and Helsinki Airport.
The flights will have scheduled flight times of roughly 35 minutes, with the actual flight time 10 minutes shorter.
Globally, flights as short as these are usually not flown except for regions where the terrain is rough and the flight goes over a sea area or mountainous terrain, for example, the airline said in a press release.
Minna Arve NCP, the mayor of Turku, told the YLE on Wednesday that she was stunned by the short-sighted decision even though the flights had clearly been of secondary importance to the airline for several years.
The flights have often been cancelled and confidence in the company has thereby eroded for a long time, she said. We have good connections at Turku Airport with Air Baltic, Wizz Air and SAS. People fly to Helsinki from Turku, mainly due to transfer connections.
This is a very short-sided position to take specific in the sense that Finland is an island. We have limited fixed connections to Europe, and we are far from the world. We're now strengthening our Western connections, also from other localities than Helsinki, he said. Helsinki Airport is very important for the growing urban areas, she said, and in that sense discussion about the profitability of short flights is possibly misguided.