Finland’s national carrier Finnair has said it is not concerned by increased competition from former Yugoslav markets, with Slovenia and Croatia remaining attractive destinations due to a high level of Asian transfer passengers on its seasonal flights to the two countries. It noted that the continued development of its limited network in the region will highly depend on travel demand from Asia. As a result, the majority of its operations continue to centre around Slovenia and Croatia, where it sees a mix of both point to point, as well as transfer traffic from the Far East. The airline currently maintains seasonal services from Helsinki to Ljubljana, Dubrovnik and Split.

In a statement, the airline said, "Slovenia and Croatia are very popular leisure destinations from Finland. A lot of the travel is point to point but we do see an increase in transfer traffic as well, those destinations are becoming increasingly popular among our Asian customers, particularly from Japan". It added, “The Croatian market serves as a great destination for Finnair customers both from Northern Europe and Asia. We have also seen increasing numbers of passengers from Croatia using Finnair on their trips. Demand for Croatian destinations has been growing year by year”. Finnair’s Ljubljana service has also proven popular with travellers from Asia, with the Finnish carrier handling an average of over 30.000 passengers on the seasonal route each year. “Ljubljana is developing well and we hope that someday it will be feasible to operate there year round. We actively follow many markets where we could either increase frequencies or make them year round operations”, the airline said.

Demand for flights between the former Yugoslavia to Finland has grown in recent years, with Croatia Airlines initially introducing seasonal flights from Zagreb to Helsinki in 2017, while Norwegian Air Shuttle launched services from the Finnish capital to Pristina. Earlier this month, Air Serbia inaugurated three weekly year-round operations between Belgrade and Helsinki. This will be followed up by the introduction of Wizz Air services from Skopje to Turku, located in the south of the country. Furthermore, Montenegro Airlines maintains charters to the Finnish capital. Finnair said it currently has no news regarding its future plans for Serbia, Macedonia or Montenegro. The Oneworld alliance member, which has carved out a niche with direct flights to Asia, says future expansion in these markets will highly depend on demand from the Far East. “For the time being, the demand from our Asian units has been to Croatian coastal areas. However, when Asian tour operators create more products for the former Yugoslav area we want to be their first choice of airline”.