Helsinki Airport
Helsinki-Vantaa Airport Helsinki-Vantaan lentoasema Helsingfors-Vanda flygplats | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Summary | |||||||||||||||||||
| Airport type | Public | ||||||||||||||||||
| Owner/Operator | Finavia | ||||||||||||||||||
| Serves | Helsinki metropolitan area | ||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Aviapolis, Vantaa, Finland | ||||||||||||||||||
| Opened | July 1952 | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Elevation AMSL | 55 m / 179 ft | ||||||||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 60°19′02″N 024°57′48″E / 60.31722°N 24.96333°E | ||||||||||||||||||
| Website | www | ||||||||||||||||||
| Map | |||||||||||||||||||
HEL/EFHK Location within Finland HEL/EFHK HEL/EFHK (Scandinavia) HEL/EFHK HEL/EFHK (Europe) | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Helipads | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Statistics (2025) | |||||||||||||||||||
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Helsinki-Vantaa Airport (Finnish: Helsinki-Vantaan lentoasema, Swedish: Helsingfors-Vanda flygplats) (IATA: HEL, ICAO: EFHK), or simply Helsinki Airport, is the main international airport serving Helsinki, the capital of Finland, as well as 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 of Helsinki's city centre. The airport is operated by state-owned Finavia. The facility covers a total of 1,800 hectares (4,448 acres) of land and contains three runways.
The airport is by far the busiest in Finland (with 20 times the traffic of the next-busiest, Rovaniemi) 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. In 2025, Helsinki Airport had nearly 17 million passengers, 89% of whom were international passengers and 11% domestic passengers. On average, the airport handles around 350 departures a day.
The airport is the main hub for Finnair, the flag carrier of Finland, and its subsidiary Nordic Regional Airlines. It is also an operating base for Norwegian Air Shuttle. As of October 2025, the airport has around 20 regularly operating airlines and more than 100 direct routes, of which around 80 are intra-European and 25 intercontinental routes to Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and North America.
Originally built for the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, the airport today provides jobs for 25,000 people and 1,500 companies operate at the airport.
Helsinki Airport has historically been a major transit hub between Europe and Asia. However, its role as a key transfer point has been constrained by the closure of Russian airspace in 2022, which forced airlines to reroute flights and lengthen connections. Despite the closure, Helsinki Airport recorded 2,299,243 international transfer passengers in 2025, which represents an increase of around 10.6 % compared with 2024, showing recovery in long-haul services and transfer activity.
Helsinki Airport's minimum transit time of 35 minutes is among the shortest in Europe. According to Finavia's survey, as many as one in every three passengers select their flight route based on the transit airport.