Travel chains can be used to reduce emissions and to increase options

Intermodality means offering a seamless travel experience using two or more methods of travel within one trip. An example of this would be replacing a domestic flight with a fast bus or train connection, which reduces the environmental impact of the journey. The relative carbon dioxide emission load on shorter flights is always higher than on longer flights. Long-haul flights typically also carry belly cargo, which improves the efficiency of the flight. On short flights, there are usually other options for travel as well. For example, traveling by train from Helsinki to Kuopio would save, on average, about 45 kilograms of CO2 emissions per person*.  Tuomo Karppinen, Finnair's Head of Environment states.

Creating functional travel chains can have an impact when the sustainability of flying is developed. At Finnair, combining different modes of travel is seen as one tool in achieving the aviation industry's goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. At its best, a travel chain does not create significant delays. On shorter flights, the time spent at the airport is relatively longer and this can be avoided with train or bus travel. In many cities the bus or train connections also take the customers closer to the city centre, making travel easier.

Ease of travel is also increased with the option to purchase a single ticket for the entire journey. Finnair is already co-operating with Deutsche Bahn in Germany and offers flight and railway ticket bundles that make it possible to reach the final destination directly. Rail&Fly service is available from all the seven German airports that Finnair operates direct flights to. With Deutsche Bahn, the destination can be any of 5600 options across Germany.

Airlines and bus operators have great responsibility in ensuring the travel experience is seamless. Scheduling must support swift transfers and customers should be able to rely on making their connecting flights despite possible bus delays.

In Finland, the renewal of the Helsinki-Vantaa airport has created even better opportunities to develop intermodality as the new train station is right by the arrival and departure halls.

Germany and France lead the way 

In Central Europe, where the network of rail connections is particularly good, intermodality has already been introduced with positive results. Functional travel chains have made it possible to decrease the number of short flights and centralize flights to larger airports.

In Germany, the airline representative German Aviation Industry (BDL) and national train line Deutsche Bahn (DB) have joined forces to create ways in which to replace short domestic flights with train connections.

The co-operation has led to an action plan including steps to increase the feeder lines for international flights, improve the connections between train stations and airports, optimize routes, and increase the speed of train travel.

In France intermodality is considered to be one of the travel methods of the future. The French state is directing the travel operators to make this shift with several policy changes. The most radical of these is a law forbidding all domestic flights where the destination could be reached by train in under 2,5 hours. The goal is to make the policy even stricter in the long run.

Finnair is taking the next steps in increasing intermodality. The objective is to ensure that environmental goals are reached – without compromising good connections. In 2023 Finnair replaced two of its shortest domestic routes, from Helsinki Airport to the cities of Turku and Tampere with a bus connection. The emissions produced per mile and customer on the Tampere and Turku routes were relatively heavy within the Finnair network. ”We fully understand the importance that good connections have on the business and economy in these cities, and Turku and Tampere remained as important parts of our network. Travel on these routes is focused on international transfer travel, and has been slowly but steadily growing, especially on the day services ", Perttu Jolma, Finnair's VP Network Management says."Combining different modes of transport is an important tool in reducing carbon emissions, and it is also in line with Finland's national emission reduction targets."

* The emissions for the Helsinki–Kuopio flight route were calculated based on Finnair’s average fuel consumption in 2024, divided by the number of passengers. The train journey emissions have been sourced from the state-owned railway company VR’s emissions calculator.