Finnair Icy Snowy Landing into Helsinki-Vantaa Airport

Helsinki-Vantaa Airport[a][1] (IATA: HEL, ICAO: EFHK), or simply Helsinki Airport, is the main international airport of the city of Helsinki, its surrounding metropolitan area, and the Uusimaa region in Finland. The airport is located in the neighbouring city of Vantaa, about 5 kilometres (3 mi) west of Tikkurila, the administrative centre of Vantaa and 9.2 NM (17.0 km; 10.6 mi) north[1] of Helsinki's city centre. The airport is operated by state-owned Finavia.[2] The facility covers a total of 1,800 hectares (4,448 acres) of land and contains three runways.[3]

The airport is by far the busiest in Finland (with 20 times the traffic of the next-busiest, Oulu) and the fourth busiest in the Nordic countries in terms of passenger numbers. About 90% of Finland's international air traffic passes through Helsinki Airport.[4] In 2022, Helsinki Airport had a total of 12.9 million passengers, 87% of whom were international passengers and 13% domestic passengers.[5] On average, the airport handles around 350 departures a day.[4]

The airport is the main hub for Finnair, the flag carrier of Finland, and its subsidiary Nordic Regional Airlines. It is also a hub for CityJet (on behalf of SAS) and an operating base for Jet Time, Norwegian Air Shuttle, SunClass Airlines and TUI fly Nordic. Helsinki Airport has around 50 regularly-operating airlines. The airport has around 80 scheduled destinations to other parts of Europe and 21 direct long-haul routes to Asia, the Middle East, and North America. There are also 35 charter destinations including numerous long-haul charter destinations.[6][7]

Originally built for the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, the airport today provides jobs for 25,000 people and there are 1,500 companies that operate at this airport.[8][9]

Finavia aims to strengthen the position of Helsinki Airport in transit passenger traffic between Europe and Asia, and to increase the number of direct connections to Europe.[10] Helsinki Airport's minimum transit time of 35 minutes is among the shortest in Europe.[11] According to Finavia's survey, as many as one in every three passengers select their flight route based on the transit airport.