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Finnair is looking outside aviation for one of its most important leadership appointments.
The Helsinki-based carrier has named Sini Kivekäs, 51, as chief people officer and a member of the executive board from June 1, 2026. Kivekäs joins from financial services after nearly three decades at Nordea and Aktia, a move that says as much about Finnair’s strategic priorities as it does about her background.
The appointment, disclosed in a stock exchange release today, comes at a moment when Finnair’s operational performance is strengthening, and its leadership team is being reshaped around the next phase of the airline’s strategy.
Why Finnair hired outside aviation
Kivekäs holds a Master of Laws and most recently served on Aktia’s group executive committee, where she oversaw group functions and HR. Before joining Aktia, she held several senior leadership roles at Nordea. She arrives without aviation industry experience, but with deep exposure to talent management, organizational change, and leadership development in one of the Nordic region’s most competitive white-collar sectors.
That appears intentional.
“I warmly welcome Sini to Finnair, as we continue to develop our employee experience as a key enabler of our Finnair strategy,” CEO Turkka Kuusisto said in the release. “Sini brings with her a wealth of experience, and a solid understanding of how a holistic people plan and leading employee experience contribute to a company’s success.”
Kivekäs framed the role in similar terms. “Finnair’s clear strategy and values, and its determined forward-looking approach in a changing and increasingly unpredictable world, strongly resonate with me,” she said. “ I believe that engaged and highly skilled personnel are key to a company’s success, as employee and customer experience ultimately form one shared experience and differentiating factor.”
That distinction matters for Finnair. The airline has won Skytrax’s Best Airline in Northern Europe award 15 consecutive times, and service quality remains one of the few defensible advantages available to a mid-sized Nordic carrier competing against larger European rivals and Gulf airlines with structurally lower costs.
A broader leadership reset
The appointment also fits into a broader reshaping of Finnair’s leadership group.
In August 2025, Pia Aaltonen-Forsell joined as chief financial officer, replacing Kristian Pullola. At the board level, three long-serving directors departed at the March 2025 AGM and were replaced by Andreas Bierwirth, Nicolas Boutin, Lisa Farrar, and Mika Ihamuotila. All four were re-elected in March 2026 alongside Chair Sanna Suvanto Harsaae.
Taken together, the changes point to a company that has refreshed much of its senior leadership within a relatively short period while keeping continuity at the top.
Operational momentum supports the strategy
The timing is favorable. Finnair’s April 2026 traffic figures showed clear operational momentum. Passenger volumes rose 6.3% year on year to 1.03 million, while revenue per available seat kilometer (RASK) increased 14.7%. Passenger load factor improved to 78.0%, and Asia traffic continued to outperform, with passenger growth of 12.7% and load factors reaching 84.9%.
The strength in Asia is central to Finnair’s strategy. The airline has added frequencies to Osaka and Nagoya while scaling back parts of its North Atlantic network, reinforcing its long-standing positioning around Helsinki’s geography as a shorter connection point between Europe and Asia.
At the same time, operational reliability improved materially. On-time performance reached 87.5% in April, up from 80.2% a year earlier.
There are still constraints. Finnair suspended Middle East flights in February because of the regional security situation, leaving capacity and passenger numbers on those routes at zero in April. But industry-wide disruptions have also tightened capacity across overlapping corridors, helping support pricing elsewhere in the network.
What the hire says about Finnair’s next phase
Against that backdrop, the Kivekäs hire looks less like a routine HR appointment and more like a statement about where Finnair believes competitive advantage will come from next.
Kuusisto appears to be building a leadership team around two assumptions: that Asia remains the airline’s strongest structural opportunity, and that customer experience will increasingly depend on employee engagement rather than scale alone.
The choice of a banking executive to lead that effort reflects a broader shift in how the company views people strategy. Financial services may not be a traditional talent pipeline for airlines, but it is an industry shaped by constant transformation, sophisticated workforce expectations, and intense competition for high performers.
Those capabilities transfer.
Kivekäs will arrive just as Finnair enters its busiest summer travel period. Her first months will offer an early indication of how aggressively the airline intends to turn workforce culture into a commercial advantage rather than simply an HR function.
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