Qantas Reduces Finnair A330 Wet Leases

Qantas has stopped operating an A330-300 wet-leased from Finnair because of long-running industrial unrest among Finnair pilots.

Qantas began wet leasing two A330-300s from Finnair in 2023, deploying one on the Sydney (SYD) – Singapore (SIN) route and the other on the Sydney – Bangkok (BKK) route.

Wet leasing refers to the aircraft provider, in this case, Finnair, providing flight crews along with the aircraft.

The arrangement worked well for both airlines. Finnair had surplus aircraft and crews, and Qantas had a shortage of aircraft and crews.

However, Finnair pilots have been refusing to work standby shifts, forcing Finnair to ferry in replacement pilots from Helsinki. But it is a long way from Helsinki to Singapore or Bangkok, and that, combined with mandated rest time, meant replacement pilots were not arriving in time to operate the flights for Qantas, causing a spate of flight cancellations and draining Qantas’ patience.

With no resolution to the industrial unrest, Qantas has decided to return one aircraft to Finnair.

"Unfortunately, the pilots' industrial actions have affected our ability to operate our wet-lease operations with the reliability that is needed, resulting in changes in our collaboration,” Finnair COO Jaakko Schildt said.

Early indications are the returning aircraft is OH-LTS (msn 1078), which last operated for Qantas on April 29, 2025. The remaining A330, OH-LTR (msn 1067) cannot service both the daily Singapore and Bangkok flights. However, neither aircraft has operated to Singapore since mid-April, but the daily Bangkok flights continue.

Qantas operates several other daily frequencies between Sydney and Singapore with its own aircraft, while it only has one daily frequency to Bangkok.

Qantas says the wet lease arrangement was only ever a short term fix to its own pilot and aircraft shortages.

The 2023 deal was to run for up to five years, with Qantas crews to take over flying the aircraft/s from October 2025 - along the lines of a conventional dry lease.

Earlier this year there was some speculation that Qantas was keen to lease additional Finnair A330s, assuming they still had some spare, to ramp up its frequencies to Asia.

The wet-lease deal with Qantas involved around 90 Bangkok and Singapore-based Finnair flight crew. Finnair says it will now furlough 36 pilots between September 2025 and May 2026, although it attributes that decision to ongoing industrial unrest rather than the return of the wet-leased A330.

Photo: Airbus