Finnair

Is Finnair safe?

Yes. Finnair has not had a fatal accident in 62 years, and it has never written offHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary a jet. It carried 11.9 million passengers in 2025 under Finnish oversight within the EU's EASA system. We score it 88, level with KLM and a point above SAS.

What holds the score back is not the record but the hardware and the neighbourhood. Finnair's A319s and A320s are about 24 years old on average, and its home sits next to Russia, whose airspace is closed and whose border region is a source of GPS jamming.

When did Finnair last have a fatal crash?

On 8 November 1963. Flight 217, a Douglas DC-3 of Aero O/Y, the company's earlier name, was approaching Mariehamn in the Åland Islands at night when it hit trees about 1.5 km short of the runway, flipped over and caught fire. 22 of the 25 people on board died. Less than three years earlier, in January 1961, another DC-3 had crashed in woods near Vaasa, killing all 25; investigators found that both pilots had been drinking and short of sleep the night before.

Since then the record is clean of deaths and write-offsHull lossAn accident in which an aircraft is destroyed or damaged beyond economic repair. People may or may not be hurt.More in the glossary. The Aviation Safety Network lists hijackings in 1978 and 1986, both ended with the hijacker arrested, and ground events: a jet bridge damaging an E190 at Copenhagen in 2022 and a cabin crew member badly hurt in 2020 when the stairs drove away from an A320 at Helsinki as she stepped back onto them.

The closest call was in Hong Kong in November 2010. An A340 cleared to take off from runway 07L turned early onto a parallel taxiway at night and began its take-off roll there. The tower spotted it on ground radar and told the crew to stop, which they did about 1,400 metres down the taxiway. Investigators found the pilots had been distracted stowing their electronic flight bags at a busy moment.

How old is Finnair's fleet?

Older than the brand suggests. At 30 June 2026 Finnair flew 54 aircraft on its own certificate with an average age of 14.7 years. The long-haul fleet is the modern part: 18 Airbus A350s, delivered from 2015 to 2024, averaging 8.3 years, with one more due in late 2026. The A330s average 16.6 years.

The narrow-body fleet is where age shows: 5 A319s average 25.1 years and 10 A320s 23.9 years. The 14 A321s are younger at 11.9. Finnair has not ordered new Airbus narrow-bodies to replace them. In 2026 it ordered 18 Embraer E195-E2s for its regional partner and said it plans to add up to 12 used A320 and A321ceos; letters of intent cover six leased A320s due in 2027.

Age alone does not make an aircraft unsafe, because maintenance rules do not loosen as an aircraft gets older. But older jets break down more, and the AeroInside incident list for Finnair is mostly technical: hydraulic leaks, engine shutdowns, smoke and smells. In April 2024 an A330 from Chicago lost engine oil over Canada, the crew shut the engine down and diverted to New York JFK. In October 2025 an A320 leaked hydraulic fluid onto an engine after landing in Vienna, and the dripping fluid produced smoke. Passengers left normally.

GPS jamming and the Russian border

GNSS interference has become routine around the Baltic since 2022, and Finland's transport agency Traficom reported a five-fold rise in jamming reports in 2023. For Finnair it became visible in April 2024, when two flights to Tartu in Estonia turned back to Helsinki because the airport's only approach needed GPS. At the end of April Finnair suspended the route for a month so the airport could set up an approach that does not need GPS.

Fintraffic, Finland's air navigation provider, said at the time that safety is not compromised: aircraft also navigate with inertial systems and ground beacons, and radar covers the region. We agree, and we weigh jamming as a nuisance that causes diversions rather than a crash risk. It is still a reason the environment score sits below Western Europe's big hubs.

The closed Russian airspace matters in a different way. Finnair's Asian flights now detour around it, with some routes up to 40% longer than before 2022, which means more fuel and longer working days for crews. Finnair also suspended Doha and Dubai flights from 28 February 2026, when EASA advised caution across the Gulf after strikes on Iran.

Regional flights: Norra

Finnair's ATR 72 turboprops and Embraer E190s are flown by Nordic Regional Airlines (Norra) under its own certificate, on Finnair flight numbers. Norra's 24 aircraft average 17.5 years. In August 2025 a Norra ATR began rolling forward after engine start at Helsinki because, investigators found, the pilots had not set the parking brake; the propeller hit a ground power unit and debris pierced the fuselage. Nobody was hurt. We do not count Norra events against Finnair's accident record, but we mention them because you book them as Finnair.

Flying Finnair in winter

• Lapland flights run in hard conditions. Ivalo, Kittilä and Rovaniemi see snow, ice and short daylight for months. In November 2021 an A319 drifted off the runway at low speed at Ivalo and touched a snowbank; nobody was hurt. Expect de-icing delays and the odd diversion.
• Check "operated by" on short domestic and Nordic routes if you want to know whether a Finnair jet or a Norra turboprop will fly you.

How we scored it

The accident record (95) and oversight (92) carry Finnair: no deaths since 1963 and full EASA oversight. Incidents score 84: we found no serious crew-error incident in the last ten years. The fleet (70) costs the most: the A319s and A320s are about 24 years old. The environment (82) reflects Arctic winters, GPS jamming and the long way round Russia. Overall 88.