Finnair passengers on flights over the North Pole to receive a special certificate

Finnair customers taking flights to Japan and South Korea that pass over the North Pole are to receive a special certificate to mark the moment.

The first Finnair pilot to fly over the North Pole was Ismo Kuosmanen and now, almost 40 years later, his son Aleksi, a Finnair A350 captain, was one of the four flight crew to recreate the landmark flight with Captain Kari Holopainen at the command.

The carrier’s flight took place on 9 March from Helsinki to Tokyo Narita. Instead of heading directly east, it headed north and passed directly over the North Pole as part of its extended flight path to Japan, skirting around the now-closed Russian airspace.

Passengers on board were told when they passed over the North Pole.

Aleksi Kuosmanen, Finnair Captain and Deputy A350 Fleet Chief, said: “Flying over the North Pole is probably a part of every long-haul pilot’s bucket list, and for me this flight has this additional personal meaning. Hours and hours of careful planning preceded this flight to ensure a smooth and safe flight. There were airports along the polar route – in Scandinavia, Northern Canada, Alaska and Northern Japan – that we had not used before, so a lot of information gathering was done to ensure our defined alternative airports are feasible for us to use.”

While flying over the North Pole itself proved uneventful, Kuosmanen said: “The only noticeable thing was that the good old magnetic compass that we have in the cockpit went a bit haywire.”

The magnetic compass is a back-up system only, while the aircraft’s other navigation systems maintained navigation accuracy in the polar region. The route took the flight from Finland to Norway over Svalbard and the North Pole towards Alaska and then across the sea to Japan.

Riku Kohvakka, Finnair Flight Planning Manager, and his team calculated the basic data for the new routings, including the flight time, payload, fuel consumption, terrain and navigation fees, to arrive at the cost for the flight for Finnair’s Traffic Planning’s department.

Flying the northern polar route meant the carrier needed to extend its A350’s ETOPS (Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards) times, i.e. the maximum route allowable within distance of a suitable alternate airport, in the highly unlikely event of an emergency landing.