Finnair has announced that its affiliate freighter airline, Nordic Global Airlines (NGA), in which it holds a minority share of 40%, will cease operations on May
31.

Again, another cargo carrier will cease to exist.
In this case it’s NGA, which was founded in 2011 and primarily handled Finnair's Asian cargo traffic and was described as a “low-cost and thin-organisation model.”
The carrier’s end doesn’t really come as surprise since co-owner Finnair decided already last year to step out of main deck activities and discontinue separate cargo freighter ops and only
concentrate on carrying cargo in the holds of its passenger fleet. Right after this strategic shift was announced NGA said it would face severe financial problems if no new business was found
fast to replace the volumes carried on behalf of Finnair. “They (Finnair) account for almost 50 percent of our total turnover generated by our 2 MD-11 freighters,” said NGO’s CEO James Neff last
December.
NGA failed to gain new business
With Finnair Cargo concentrating entirely on the lower deck capacity of its passenger fleet for transporting goods there was no more need for holding on to the NGA operations. As now seen and
sadly enough for the NGA staff, the remaining owners were not able to acquire sufficient new business to compensate for the loss of its prime client Finnair.
In a statement, Finnair said that its belly-hold cargo capacity would increase “significantly” with the induction of the new Airbus A350 passenger aircraft. Finnair emphasized that the
termination of the NGA operations had no material impact on its cargo business or financial position.
Finnair Cargo owns 40% of NGA, and other shareholders include Neff Capital Management, Daken Capital Partners, and the Mutual Pension Insurance Company Ilmarinen.
Nol van Fenema / Heiner Siegmund
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