Finnair committed to distribution and retailing transformation, taking further steps in this journey

Finnair continues to achieve good results in distribution transformation with 69% of modern channel* share Q1 2024. Domestic Finland travel is now fully on NDC for indirect channels. With NDC share of indirect growing in Europe and globally, new products and features like PrioFlex and continuous pricing are enabled, breaking silos and adding value to customers which wasn't possible prior with legacy technology. Progress has been made through consistent work with our partners from the technology and travel agent network side – we want to warmly thank our partners for the collaboration!

We now continue our distribution transformation journey: The classic ticket type was removed from EDIFACT in selected markets in April (as announced earlier), and continues 01 November 2024 on additional markets including Slovenia, Iceland, Czech Republic, Ireland, Portugal and Lithuania. By 5 May 2025, Classic ticket type will be fully removed from all intra-European routes. 

We announced in 2021 our ambition to end legacy EDIFACT distribution by end of 2025, signaling our commitment to drive change consistently and with ambition. We continue this path, but the pace of change towards modern retailing in the airline industry has been slower than we originally expected. At this stage, we do not see it feasible to end EDIFACT by end of 2025 across all of our markets. Nonetheless, our commitment to advance the transformation remains, as this enables so many benefits to our customers. In line with this, we anticipate Finnair’s share of modern channels to continue to grow in the coming months and years.  

"We are confident that the path of NDC is the right one, as it brings tangible benefits and value to all stakeholders, most importantly our customers. We do not want to sit and wait for issues to be solved, but we want to be actively solving them together with our partners – this is the Finnair way. Together with our partners we have proved that NDC is scalable also in the business travel segment.”, says Jenni Suomela, Vice President Global sales and Channel management. 

Finnair invites travel agent partners to sign up for our NDC (see more here) and join us in building modern travel retailing to deliver simplicity, flexibility and excellent end-to-end experience to travelers.

* Modern channels include direct as well as modern, digital indirect channels (NDC)