Finnair has just announced that they’re going to have to cancel a majority of their flights tomorrow due to a (mostly unrelated) labor dispute.

The airline canceled 26 flights Sunday evening (November 24), and then it’s expected that 250 more flights will be canceled Monday (November 25). Finnair was scheduled to operate 377 flights on Monday, so the company only expects to be able to operate about 120 of them.

Those who are impacted by this should be contacted by email or message with rebooking options. You can find the status of specific flights at this link.

So, what’s going on here? Which work group is the airline having contract issues with? None, it seems…

This strike was called by the Finnish Aviation Labor Union, IAU, which has informed the airline of a support strike on Monday, November 25, 2019. This strike is being done in support of Posti, the Finnish postal service, which has been in an ongoing labor dispute.

Finnair flight attendants and pilots aren’t engaged in this support strike, but rather this is being called by the union representing many of the ground workers.

The support strike will have major impacts on Finnair flight operations. The strike impacts critical services at Helsinki Airport, including loading and unloading of aircraft, fueling, push-back of aircraft, Finnair customer services, catering, and maintenance operations.

Jaakko Schildt, Finnair’s Chief Operating Officer, said the following:

“Finnair is not a party in the dispute related to the support strike, however it’s impacts are now seriously disrupting the travel plans of over 20,000 Finnair customers. We are extremely sorry for the trouble and concern this situation is causing our customers, and we are doing our best to mitigate the impacts to them. We are working to find suitable reroutings for customers impacted by this, but rerouting such a large number of customers unfortunately takes some time. ”

Bottom Line

Finnair is canceling about two thirds of their flights on Monday over a “support strike.” Ground workers in Helsinki are essentially showing solidarity with the negotiations of the Finnish postal service.

Hopefully this gets resolved ASAP, and we don’t see even further cancelations as a result of this.