Kari Stolbow is Finnair's new operations chief for Indian sub-continent
12 Aug 2008
New Delhi: Nordic carrier, Finnair, has named Kari Stolbow as its new chief of operations in India, a market that it credits with being the prime driver of its global operations over the past two years.
A Finnair veteran, Stolbow will be the director for the Indian sub-continent, based out of Gurgaon on the outskirts of the national capital, the airline said in a statement.
The new director, has worked with the carrier for more than 27 years, of which 20 have been spent outside the home country. Stolbow has served in markets that include Russia, countries of the former Soviet Union, China and the Baltics.
Stolbow launched Finnair operations in Beijing and Latvia and has also worked for a short time at New York's JFK and London's Heathrow airports.
Finnair launched direct operations on the Delhi-Helsinki route on 30 October 2006, and to Mumbai on 27 June 2007. Currently, the airline has 12 flights a week to India.
It has been operating charter flights to Goa for over 20 years.
The airline's Asian scheduled traffic saw capacity increase by 11.9 per cent in July, while passenger traffic was up by 12 per cent. Passenger load factor also logged an an impressive 79.9 per cent.
These figures are in contrast to the European scheduled traffic, which decreased by 0.8 per cent while the North Atlantic scheduled traffic capacity increased by a much lower rate of 3.3 per cent, the airline statement said.
