Boarding.no : Farewell to Aero’s ATR aircraft

Finnair’s Estonian subsidiary Aero will fly its farewell flight on 6 January 2008. At the same time ends Finnair’s propeller aircraft era as the ATR-72-201 aircraft, which have been operating under Aero livery, are transferred to new owners.

Henrik Arle
(finnair.fi)

- We founded a new airline in Estonia in 2001 and gave it the name Aero Airlines in honour of Finnair’s history. The goal of the new airline was to develop a cost-effective model for a regional traffic operator and at the same time increase Finnair Group’s market share in the fast-developing and growing Baltic air transport sector,” says Finnair Deputy CEO Henrik Arle.

In 2005 and 2006 Aero transported a total of 1.5 million passengers.

In both years it operated over 20,000 flights which comes to approximately 60 flights per day.

Aero ATR 72 (Finnair)

- Aero’s turnover was approximately 50 million euros and in the last years its result was slightly positive. At the most we had a staff of 200 of which a third were hired personnel. I would like to thank all Aero staff for their invaluable input these past years,” says Aero Managing Director Tommi Aaltonen.

The first ATR-72 was delivered to the company in October 1989. Aero flew its first ATR-72 flight on 31 March 2002 on the Helsinki-Tallinn route.

The nine aircraft were gradually transferred to Aero, and in 2004 the ATRs were registered in Estonia.

The aircraft have been in the ownership of Finnair Aircraft Finance the entire time.

- Finnair’s ATR-72s have logged the most flight time in the world for this aircraft type. In Group airline operations the aircraft have flown a total of some 285,000 hours with over 450,000 landings. Despite the large amount of flight hours, the aircraft are only half way through their lifecycle and can be operated for a number of years to come. The ATR-72 has been an ideal aircraft type on short feeder routes as it is very fuel efficient,” explains Aero Director Flight Operations Timo Honkavaara.

In the future Finnair’s and Aero’s customers in traffic between Helsinki and Tallinn will be served by Finnair’s cooperation partner Finncomm Airlines with its own, modern ATR aircraft. The flights will have Finnair flight numbers and the schedules will remain unchanged.