Speaking at a breakfast briefing in London last week, Finnair general manager UK, Ireland & Benelux Andrew Fish said while the route did include a change of aircraft in Helsinki, it was cheaper.

With additional capacity and frequencies to Asia being planned for summer 2017, he urged the UK trade to start getting behind the flights.

“In the UK we need to get the message out there and particularly with Japan that we offer shortest one-stop connection flight,” Fish said.

“You can have a good value, cheaper flight than going direct and it only takes you two hours longer.”

His comments came shortly before an announcement by the airline that it is set to boost routes to both Tokyo and Hong Kong next year.

Finnair will increase its current flight schedule between Helsinki and Tokyo with four additional weekly flights to Narita on top of the daily service currently on offer. The flights will be flown with the new A350 from June 5 to October 27.

New A350 flights will also be introduced on the airline’s Hong Kong route, which will feature three additional weekly flights between June 6 and October 28 in 2017

Juha Jarvinen, chief commercial officer at Finnair, said: “With increased frequencies for Tokyo and Hong Kong on the A350, we are now tapping into the growth of Asia-Europe traffic and increasing our presence in cities that have been popular with our customers in recent years.

“It’s been a year since we received our very first Airbus A350, and with seven aircraft operating in our network, we look forward to having even more customers flying on this great aircraft.”