Press release 31 August 2017
Friends of Malmi Airport
City of Helsinki will no longer rent the original hangar to aviation use
Helsinki-Malmi is still the second-busiest airport in Finland. The number of operations has decreased slightly from last year, but e.g. in July there were almost 4000 operations at the airport. In the first half of the year, the number of operations has varied between 1500 and 3000 per month.
The City of Helsinki will no longer rent the original aircraft hangar to aviation use even though aviation activities at the airport will continue at least until the end of 2019.
Since the turn of the year, the airport has been operated by Malmi Airfield Association, whose Chairman Mr. Niko Lamberg is satisfied with the steady number of operations.
“An enormous number of things related to operating practices changed at the turn of the year, and the pilots have adopted the new practices well. The forecasts of traffic and membership figures we made last year have already been exceeded, and pilot training has continued actively”, says Lamberg. “The practices have been honed, and the operation of the airport has been efficient and safe.”
The chief operating officer of BF-Lento Ltd, Mr. Mark Baker, has worked at Malmi Airport for decades. According to him, the airport has continuously been used by international flights too.
“Business flights, survey flights, travellers, and we even had an American aerial circumnavigator in his 1944 Beechcraft pop by in July”, Baker recites.
“On the basic level, cooperation with the City has worked well. Information and answers are at times hard to come by, the responsibility is being shuffled back and forth between bureaus in a complicated manner. Processing the tenancy proposals made by our company is unclear. As late as in March we were told to keep calm, but now the situation is still completely up in the air. Investing hundreds of thousands into temporary solutions is in practice not possible”, says Baker.
The Friends of Malmi Airport still pursues active cooperation with the City and development of Helsinki-Malmi Airport in aviation use. Chairman Timo Hyvönen is amazed by the City’s actions: “The officials made the decisions about the hangar during the summer break of the committees, but no decision documents are to be found. I hope that the City Council will now quickly react!”
Hyvönen is also worried about the officials’ coping with stress: “The citizens are quite angry, and even though our association tries to keep things calm, the officials must be taking a lot of pressure. I hope that the hangar’s continued aviation use is soon confirmed so that things calm down. The State also has the ball with Lex Malmi. To advance the matter, City of Helsinki must now be presented with a concrete proposal specifying the land area [to be exchanged for Malmi].”
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A 1944 Beechcraft Staggerwing visited Malmi in July. The situation of the hangar remains unclear and under dispute. Photo: Friends of Malmi Airport
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Upon completion in 1937, the hangar was one of the largest in Europe. Photo: Sampo Kiviniemi
More information:
Niko Lamberg
Chairman, Malmi Airfield Association
tel. +358 50 522 7535
email niko.lamberg@efhfry.fi
Mark Baker
Chief operating officer, BF-Lento Ltd
tel. +358 40 731 2000
email bf-lento@kolumbus.fi
Timo Hyvönen
Chairman, Friends of Malmi Airport
tel. +358 50 3748371
email chair@malmiairport.fi
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Citizens on the move
Citizens incensed by the City’s actions have spontaneously set up a Facebook event to protest the decisions concerning the hangar. They have invited everyone to a 15-minute social media demonstration on Friday 1 September 2017 at noon. The activists will gather in front of the old Helsinki-Malmi hangar or honk their car horn wherever they are.
Info bulletin about the demonstration (in Finnish): https://