Finnair opens Svalbard route
Will be the first airline to offer scheduled international flights to Longyearbyen in the Norwegian Arctic.
Finnair’s direct route from Helsinki to Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost airport with public scheduled flights, starts on June 1st next year and will last throughout the summer season until August 27th.
“During Midsummer we will provide three weekly flights to Svalbard, which is mainly aimed at European customers, but can also be connected from our Asian flights,” says Petri Vuori, Finnair’s Vice-President of Global Sales in a press release.
Today, SAS and Norwegian operates daily domestic flights from the Norwegian mainland to Svalbard. Flights are operated both from Oslo and Tromsø. The new route from Helsinki will be the first scheduled international flight directly to Longyearbyen airport since Aeroflot launched its Moscow-Murmansk-Svalbard route in September 1975.
Longyearbyen airport is located at 76 degrees north.
Although Norway is part of the Schengen Area, Svalbard is not. Therefore, passengers flying to and from the Longyearbyen will have to walk through passport control, either with a national ID card indicating nationality or a passport is needed.
