Finnair
Finnair is Finland's biggest airline and the national flag carrier. It operates from the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport and dominates both domestic and international air travel markets in Finland. Finnair is a member of the oneworld Airline alliance. Its IATA designator is AY. Finnish state owns 60% of share, and 20% are foreign-owned.

Started in 1923 as Aero OY, Finnair has had to go through some very difficult times, including World War II, which was especially difficult for the airline because Helsinki and other Finnish cities became air raid targets. The company saw half of its fleet taken over by the Finnish Air Force during that time, and it is estimated that during the Winter War of 1939 and 1940, half of the airline's passengers were children being evacuated to Sweden.

History
Finnair is Finland's biggest airline and the national flag carrier. It operates from the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport and dominates both the domestic and international air travel markets in Finland. Finnair is a member of the One World Airline alliance. Its IATA designator is AY. The Finnish state owns 60% of its shares, and 20% are foreign-owned.

Started in 1923 as Aero OY, Finnair had to go through some very difficult times, including World War II, which was especially difficult for the airline because Helsinki and other Finnish cities became air raid targets. The company saw half of its fleet taken over by the Finnish Air Force during that time, and it is estimated that during the Winter War of 1939 and 1940, half of the airline's passengers were children being evacuated to Sweden.

In 1953, Finnair changed its name from Aero OY to its current name, although the brand name, Aero OY, was revived in 1982 as a domestic subsidiary.

In 1961, Finnair joined the jet age by adding a Caravelle aeroplane to its fleet. In 1970, it took possession of its first American jet, a Douglas DC-8.

In 1961 and 1963, Finnair experienced the company's only fatal accidents so far:

• On January 3, 1961, drunken pilots crashed a DC-3 in Koivulahti, Finland

• On November 8, 1963, a malfunctioning altimeter caused another DC-3 to crash near Mariehamn on the Åland Islands, during low visibility conditions

In 1999, Finnair joined the One World Alliance. The battle lines were now drawn as Finnair’s Scandinavian arch rival, Scandinavian Airlines System, had been a founding member of the rival Star Alliance in 1997.

In 2001, Finnair recycled the Aero name again by founding Aero Airlines, a start-up airline located in Tallinn, Estonia

Finnair nowadays
Finnair Group operations cover the following areas: scheduled passenger traffic and leisure traffic, technical and ground handling operations, catering, travel agencies as well as travel information and reservation services. The number of personnel of Finnair Group is approximately 9 000. The subsidiaries provide air traffic support services or operate in closely related areas.
Finnair's major shareholder is the Finnish government with a 58.4 per cent holding. Other shareholders include insurance companies, various companies and private individuals. Approximately 16 per cent of the shares are owned by foreign shareholders.

Route network
Finnair's route network, depending on the timetable period, covers more than 50 international destinations. The company's long-haul routes fly to New York and Miami (in winter seasons) in North America and to Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong in Asia. Finnair flies to Tokyo and Beijing non-stop across Siberia. New long-haul destinations in 2003 were Osaka and Shanghai.

Finnair flies to 16 destinations within Finland. The domestic flight network is one of the densest in the world in relation to population.
In addition to regular scheduled traffic Finnair operates leisure flights to more than 60 destinations. Leisure traffic flies mainly to holiday resorts in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands, South-East Asia as well in the Caribbean and South America.

Fleet
The Finnair Group fleet comprises approximately 65 aircrafts: Boeing MD-11 wide-body aircraft for long haul service, Airbus A321, A320 and A319 as well as Boeing MD-82/83 aircraft for European and domestic trunk routes, ATR 72 turbo prop aircraft for domestic and Baltic feeder traffic and Boeing 757 aircraft for leisure operations.



Close to 7 million passengers
During the calendar year 2003 Finnair carried a total of 6 849 100 passengers.

A total of 3 372 300 passengers were carried on international routes and 2 213 000 on domestic routes. The number of charter passengers was 1 263 500.

Cargo and mail carried by Finnair in the year 2003 totalled 73 416 tonnes.

Sources: Wikipedia and media pages of Finnair; about the logo of Finnair: click here for the advertisement

Nokia
Nokia is a Finnish telecommunications company which formerly has been in the forest products, rubber, cable, and television businesses. The company is best known for its leading range of mobile phones, but also produces mobile phone infrastructure and other telecommunications equipment for applications such as traditional voice telephony, ISDN, broadband access, professional mobile radio, voice over IP, and wireless LAN.

Nokia was founded in 1865 as a wood-pulp mill by Fredrik Idestam. The company then expanded into producing rubber products in the Finnish city of Nokia, and began to use Nokia as a brand. After World War II Nokia acquired Finnish Cable Works, a producer of telephone and telegraph cables. In the 1970s Nokia became more involved in the telecommunications industry by developing the Nokia DX 200, a digital switch for telephone exchanges. In the 1980s Nokia got involved in the development of mobile phones for the NMT network, and in the 1990s, the company was streamlined into focusing on mobile phones, mobile phone infrastructure and other telecommunications areas, divesting itself of other items such as televisions and personal computers.

Nokia's global headquarters are at Keilalahti in Espoo, Finland.

Nokia recently stepped into the mobile gaming device sector with its N-Gage console.

For a beautiful site about the history of Nokia: click here

Source: Wikipedia