Capacity - Finland

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PRB monitoring

▪ Finland registered zero minutes of average en route ATFM delay per flight during 2022, thus achieving the local target value of 0.05.

▪ The average number of IFR movements was 28% below 2019 levels in Finland in 2022.

▪ An 8% increase in the number of ATCOs in OPS is planned by the end of RP3. The actual value remains below the 2022 plan in Helsinki ACC.

▪ The yearly total of sector opening hours in Tampere ACC was 9,838 in 2022, showing an 8.5% increase compared to 2021. Sector opening hours are 27.1% below 2019 levels.

▪ Tampere ACC registered 14.66 IFR movements per one sector opening hour in 2022, being 0.8% below 2019 levels.

▪ Finland registered an average airport arrival ATFM delay of 0.06 minutes per flight in 2022, achieving the local target of 0.28 minutes.

▪ Compared to 2021, average arrival ATFM delays in Finland were 35.08% lower in 2022, while the number of IFR arrivals increased by 83.47%.

▪ The main reason for delays was weather, accounting for 100% of delays.

En route performance

En route ATFM delay (KPI#1)

Summary of capacity performance

Finland experienced an increase in traffic from 123k flights in 2021, to 205k flights in 2022; again, with zero ATFM delay. However, traffic levels were still substantially below the 285k flights in 2019.

NSA’s assessment of capacity performance

In the beginning of 2022 traffic was just recovering from Covid-19 until the end of February when the traffic almost ceased in Finland. The war in Ukraine; the closure of Russian airspace; and banning Russian airlines from flying in Finnish airspace, had a huge impact in traffic.

As a result of the sanctions, all European airlines stopped flying to Asia completely over Finland. In general, overflying traffic was around 60 % of the level of 2019. Finnair, the biggest customer to Fintraffic ANS, was forced to change its strategy after the end of Russian overflights to Asia. Traffic to Kaliningrad increased over the international waters between Estonia and Finland. This traffic increase can be noticed in the number of operations but its impact in terms of service units is less.

Finland reached the capacity targets in both KPIs, en-route and terminal. En-route delays have been zero in many years, and the capacity provided for this is due to user demand for as few delays as possible.

The en-route overflying traffic between Europe and Asia has dropped dramatically due to the war and the related airspace closure, and has resulted to continuation of some of the temporary staff lay-offs.

Monitoring process for capacity performance

Review of the actual values from the NM dashboard.

Capacity planning

En-route ATFM delay will remain low as the capacity is delivered due to user demand.

Application of Corrective Measures for Capacity (if applicable)

Additional Information Related to Russia’s War of Aggression Against Ukraine

There are changes in traffic flows/patterns: airspace closures have shifted the traffic flows from Russia to Kaliningrad, and these flights have to use the narrow international airspace corridor between Finland and Estonia, and can not use the direct routing that has been used before the war. There is an average of 350 flights per week.

Also the flights from Europe to Asia are not overflying Finnish airspace anymore because of the airspace closure. Another change is in the flights between Finland (Helsinki) and Japan, where our main operator Finnair flies daily. These flights can’t fly the most direct route anymore because of the airspace closure, and have to fly via northern route above the North Pole.

These changes do not affect the en route capacity performance, but still need to be taken into account when assessing the overall performance of the ANSP.

Other indicators

It has been difficult to estimate the number of ATCOs, as the COVID and the related temporary lay-offs still affect the planning. The 11 additional ATCOs in OPS are returning from temporary lay-offs, and as the traffic has not recovered as it has in central Europe, it is still difficult to estimate how these numbers will evolve during the rest of RP3.

Also the airspace closure due to the war and the related drop in overflying traffic affects the need of ATCOs.

Terminal performance

Arrival ATFM delay (KPI#2)

Finland identifies only Helsinki airport as subject to RP3 monitoring. The Airport Operator Data Flow is fully established and the monitoring of all capacity indicators can be performed. Nevertheless, the quality of the reporting does not allow for the calculation of the ATC pre-departure delay, with more than 60% of the reported delay not allocated to any cause. Traffic at this airport in 2022 is still 32% lower with respect to 2019, but 84% above 2021 levels.

Average arrival ATFM delays in 2022 were 0.06 min/arr, compared to 0.1 min/arr in 2021. ATFM slot adherence has slightly improved (2022: 95.6%; 2021: 93.1%).

Arrival ATFM delays at Helsinki in 2022 averaged 0,06 min/arr. (-0,22 below the target), and there were all attributed to weather reasons, mostly in the winter months. Finland reports that there was no impact of the Russian’s war on terminal capacity.

The national target on arrival ATFM delay in 2022 was met.

Other terminal performance indicators (PI#1-3)

Airport level
Airport name
Avg arrival ATFM delay (KPI#2)
Slot adherence (PI#1)
ATC pre departure delay (PI#2)
All causes pre departure delay (PI#3)
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
Helsinki-Vantaa 0.20 0.10 0.06 NA NA 93.6% 93.1% 95.6% NA% NA% 0.08 0.08 0.21 NA NA 7.8 11.1 11.5 NA NA

ATFM slot adherence

Helsinki’s ATFM slot compliance was 95.6 %. With regard to the 4.4% of flights that did not adhere, 0.8% was early and 3.6% was late.

ATC pre-departure delay

ATC pre-departure delay at Helsinki (EFHK: 2022: 0.21 min/dep) is still below the pre-pandemic value (0.39 min/dep).

All causes pre-departure delay

The total (all causes) delay in the actual off block time at Helsinki increased slightly in 2022 (EFHK: 2020: 7.76 min/dep.; 2021: 11.07 min/dep.; 2022: 11.46 min/dep.). The highest delays per flight were observed in January and December.