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Finnair will extend its codeshare cooperation with American Airlines next summer, when American Airlines begins flights from Chicago to Helsinki. The route will be flown in the summer traffic season 2011 with Boeing 767 aircraft.
“We are glad that through this cooperation, we will be able to offer our customers a new destination and an ever-expanding route network in the United States. The new route will also allow access to 43 additional destinations in North America,” says Paavo Virkkunen, Finnair’s Vice President responsible for oneworld relations.
The flights will depart Chicago at 3:40 PM and arrive in Helsinki the next morning at 8:30 AM. The flights from Helsinki back to Chicago will depart at 2:00 PM, arriving at 3:20 PM local time.
In addition, next summer Finnair will operate daily flights to New York and five flights per week to Toronto, Canada.
“This is excellent news for our international business and leisure travelers, who will now have even more opportunities to travel from the US to destinations in Europe, the Baltics and the Far East via Helsinki – which is quite often the shortest route,” notes Michael Maass, Finnair’s Sales Director for North America.
Already, American Airlines flies in codeshare cooperation with Finnair to, among other destinations, Boston, Washington, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami. In Europe, Finnair flies in cooperation with American Airlines to London, Paris and Frankfurt.
The members of the oneworld alliance are, in addition to Finnair and American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LAN, Malev Hungarian Airlines, Mexicana, Qantas and Royal Jordanian as well as around 20 subsidiaries. The Russian airline S7 will join the alliance in November and the Indian airline Kingfisher will join in 2011.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
