Finnair has reached a cost-savings agreement with its cabin crew staff. As a result, the national airline will abandon plans to outsource cabin crews on its routes to and from North America and Thailand. Finnair's own cabin crew will serve on these routes at least until the end of 2025.
The agreement announced Wednesday brings to an end labour negotiations that the company launched in November.
Among other changes, the agreement will bring adjustments to compensation for long working days on long-haul flights and layover hotel rules.
Finnair said that it has previously reached cost-cutting agreements with pilots, senior white-collar employees and engineers, and cabin crew based in Japan and Korea, and made local agreements to boost efficiency in its technical services and ground operation units. According to the airline, the agreements cover 87 percent of its personnel.
Last year, the carrier had just over 5,000 employees, including some 1,750 cabin crew members based in Finland.
Meanwhile a pact covering cabin crew salaries over the next two years is still awaiting approval by the two sides.
“The double crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the closure of Russian airspace has had a major impact on Finnair's finances. The agreements with our employees support our important goal of restoring profitability. We are grateful that our employees have been willing to contribute to solving our profitability challenge to safeguard the future of Finnair and jobs at Finnair,” Johanna Karppi, Finnair’s SVP, People and Culture, said in a statement on Wednesday.
