Qantas Leasing Finnair A330s for Singapore, Bangkok Flights

If you’re flying Qantas to Singapore or Bangkok, you could soon find yourself on a Finnair aircraft!

From next Sunday, one of Qantas’ two daily Sydney-Singapore flights will be operated by Finnair. From 31 March 2024, Finnair will also operate Qantas’ Sydney-Bangkok service.

To make this happen, Qantas will wet lease two Airbus A330-300 planes from its Oneworld partner Finnair.

Passengers will continue to check-in with Qantas and receive Qantas food, drinks and amenities on board. As the flights will have “QF” flight numbers, full Qantas points and status credits will continue to be earned.

But the physical planes will be refurbished Finnair A330s, fitted with Finnair’s new Economy, Premium Economy and Business Class seats. They will be staffed by Finnair pilots and cabin crew.

This agreement will be in place for two years. After that time, Qantas pilots and cabin crew will operate the two leased Finnair aircraft for up to three more years under a “dry lease” setup.

It’s not uncommon for airlines to use a wet lease arrangement if they need more planes to operate their full schedule. Air New Zealand, for example, will shortly use a leased Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 on its Melbourne-Auckland and Auckland-Houston routes.

What it’s like on Finnair’s Airbus A330-300

Finnair’s reconfigured Airbus A330-330s feature 28 “AirLounge” Business Class seats. This is Finnair’s newest Business Class product and it has received excellent reviews. Although the seat doesn’t have a recline function, you can use the space as a fully lie-flat bed and there’s direct aisle access from every seat.

There are three rows of Premium Economy on Finnair’s A330-300, with a seat design similar to Qantas Premium Economy. Qantas will sell these seats as Premium Economy, with full Qantas Premium Economy service provided.

There are also 230 Economy seats with the same 2-4-2 layout as the Qantas A330.

Which flights will be operated by Finnair for Qantas?

From 29 October 2023, Finnair will take over the current QF81/82 service between Sydney and Singapore. These daily flights will have different flight numbers to clearly distinguish them from the usual Qantas-operated flights.

Here’s the schedule as of November 2023:

• QF291 Sydney 12:30 – Singapore 17:50
• QF292 Singapore 20:05 – Sydney 07:10 (+1 day)

Then, from 31 March 2024, Qantas will wet lease a second Finnair A330 to operate the current QF23/24 Sydney-Bangkok service. This will be replaced with:

• QF295 Sydney 10:50 – Bangkok 16:40
• QF296 Bangkok 18:10 – Sydney 06:25 (+1 day)

Seats remain available to book on the Qantas website. There are even some Classic Flight Reward seats available on Finnair-operated Qantas services.

Qantas will continue to operate the daily QF1 and QF2 services between Sydney and Singapore (which continues to London). Passengers with existing bookings on QF81 or QF82 may request to move to QF1 or QF2 if they want to remain on a Qantas aircraft.

From 31 March 2024, Qantas will also add a fifteenth weekly Sydney-Singapore service. QF83 will fly from Sydney to Singapore on Sunday afternoons, while QF84 will add an extra overnight flight from Singapore to Sydney on Friday evenings.

This is a win-win for Qantas and Finnair

With strong demand for international flights, this arrangement allows Qantas to redeploy two wide-body aircraft onto other international routes such as Sydney-Shanghai, which restarts later this week. It’s also great for Finnair because the loss of Russian airspace has left the Helsinki-based carrier with surplus A330s.

The events of the past few years (COVID-19 and the Ukraine war) have forced Finnair to radically reinvent its business model. The Finnish national carrier has lost its competitive advantage of offering fast flight times from Europe to Asia (using Russian airspace). In fact, its A330s no longer have the range to fly from Helsinki to some destinations in northern Asia due to the longer flight paths required.

In recent years, Finnair has redeployed some of its spare A330s onto US routes. It also experimented with opening a Stockholm base and operating flights from various Scandinavian cities to Doha to assist another Oneworld partner, Qatar Airways. Finnair says that this new long-term agreement with Qantas “concludes the optimisation of Finnair’s fleet following the Russian airspace closure”.

It’s also a win for Qantas’ Business Class passengers, who will get to enjoy Finnair’s excellent Business Class product from Sydney to Singapore and Bangkok! And it results in the addition of Premium Economy seating on these routes. Finnair’s A330 Economy product is relatively similar to Qantas, so it’s a neutral change for Economy passengers.

But not everyone is thrilled. Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA) President Tony Lucas described this as an “appalling decision to outsource Australian jobs”.

“It beggars belief that Qantas is outsourcing the Spirit of Australia while simultaneously converting two of our own A330 passenger aircraft into freighters,” Lucas said.

How Finnair will make this work operationally

Finnair already operates flights from its Helsinki hub to both Singapore and Bangkok. It also has outsourced cabin crew bases in Singapore and Bangkok, which will provide flight attendants for these Qantas services.

Two dedicated Finnair A330-300 aircraft will be used to operate these Qantas flights. They will fly back and forth between Sydney and Singapore and Bangkok, with maintenance completed in Australia. Although they will retain their original Finnair seats, they will have Qantas magazines in the seat pockets and other small touches to align the travel experience more closely to the usual Qantas experience.

The pilots will be Helsinki-based. After operating a regularly scheduled Finnair flight from Helsinki to Singapore or Bangkok and resting for 1-2 nights, Finnair pilots will fly to Sydney operating on behalf of Qantas. They’ll then return to base in Helsinki using the same work pattern.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.