Air Transport in 2003

The year 2003 was extremely difficult for the air transport industry, both internationally and nationally. The Iraq war and the SARS epidemic both negatively affected air travel, but on the other hand, air traffic capacity expanded in Finland with the introduction of new airlines, among other reasons. The huge increase in Christmas season Lapland charter flights also added to air traffic growth figures for 2003.

At the beginning of the year there were 4 % fewer domestic passengers than in 2002 though correspondingly there were about 6 % more international travellers. Passenger numbers began to fall in the spring and even by the autumn there were 0.7 % fewer than the previous year. Yet by November the number had reached that of the previous year. The whole year saw a rise of 2 % in passenger flights over the year before.

A total of 13,193,194 passengers passed through CAA airports (departures, arrivals and transit). Of these, Helsinki-Vantaa accounted for 9,710,920. Compared with 2002, the passenger trend was positive at Helsinki-Vantaa (+1 %), Kuopio (+2 %), Oulu (+5 %), Rovaniemi (+7 %), Kittilä (+8 %), Pori (+9 %), Tampere- Pirkkala (+29 %) and Enontekiö (+51 %).

Jyväskylä (-14 %) and Maarianhamina (-10 %) suffered the largest relative falls in passenger numbers. At Tampere-Pirkkala Airport the number of domestic passengers fell in spring by 5 %, but international passenger numbers soared by 70 % – by as much as 92 % in May. The main reason for this enormous growth was Ryanair, which began its Tampere-Stockholm flights in April and Tampere-London flights in October. The number of passengers on international flights for the whole year at Tampere-Pirkkala rose by 57 %.

Commercial aviation landings increased during the winter by 1.8 %, compared to 2002. International crises caused a severe downturn from spring onwards and the number of landings fell below that of the year before. However, after the summer, landings began to revive. Landings by both domestic and international scheduled and charter flights rose altogether by 4.2 %. Total landings fell by 1 %.

Overflights in all of Finland increased at the beginning of the year by as much as 14 %, and although growth tailed off during summer and early autumn the number rose in total by 4 % over the year before. The number of overflight kilometres in the whole country rose by 1 %. There were 27 % more passengers on Lapland December charter flights than in 2002. At Ivalo and Kuusamo airports, passenger growth figures even exceeded one hundred percent; at Ivalo the increase was 110 % and at Kuusamo it was 137 %. A total of 38 airlines flew Christmas flights.