BEFORE THE WAR

The charter establishing the company Aero O/Y was signed in Helsinki on 12 September 1923. The company was entered into the Trade Register on 9 October and a shareholders' meeting on 1 November decided to start operations.

YEARS 1923-1929

Consul Bruno Otto Lucander, one of Aero O/Y's founders, had been general manager of the company Finland Spedition-Central Ab-Suomen Välityskeskus O/Y from 1918, and in this way had become familiar with air transport. His company had handled the affairs of the Estonian airline Aeronaut in Finland since 1923, when Aeronaut had begun operating flights from Tallinn to Helsinki.

As well as Lucander, Aero's founders were Gustaf Snellman and Fritiof Åhman. Lieutenant-Colonel Arne Somersalo served initially as the company's technical adviser. The company's capital was 500,000 Finnish marks, which was increased on 12 December by a further one million marks.

In the year of Aero's founding, Aeronaut was acquired by the German company Junkers Flugzeugwerke A.G. and a Junkers F 13 went into service on the Helsinki route. The aircraft was a single-engine monoplane, equipped with a closed cabin and seats for four passengers. The crew consisted of a pilot and a mechanic.

The first aircraft: Junkers F 13

The Junkers F 13 made a deep impression on Lucander. Aeronaut's ability to operate with the aircraft under the demanding conditions of Northern Europe convinced him that the aircraft would also be the best option for Aero. In summer 1923 Lucander had therefore concluded an agreement with Junkers for the delivery to Aero of one aircraft plus technical help and personnel in exchange for a 50 per cent holding in the Finnish company.

Aero took delivery of its first aircraft, a German-registered Junkers F 13 D-335, on 14 March 1924. Three days later, a Junkers factory pilot, Heinrich Putz, flew the aircraft to Helsinki. Its maiden commercial flight was on 20 March 1924, when it carried 162 kilos of mail from Helsinki to Tallinn.

Aero's home base was at Katajanokka, Helsinki, from where Junkers flew in winter on skis and in summer on floats. During its first summer, Aero built a seaplane ramp and small terminal building at Katajanokka. In the period 1924-1929 Aero acquired a total of seven Junkers aircraft.

The first Managing Director: Bruno Lucander

Consul Lucander became the newly founded Aero's first managing director, and the company began operations with international flights. In its first year of operation, Aero carried 269 passengers.

On 2 June 1924 Aero began to fly to Stockholm in cooperation with the Swedish airline ABA. The Junkers were fitted with floats, because at that time Tallinn and Helsinki had no airfields on land. Stockholm offered a rail link to Gothenburg, which offered flight connections to Copenhagen, Oslo and London.

During the summer, both companies operated between Helsinki and Stockholm but at this stage the route was not as successful as that to Tallinn, which offered through the Nord-Europa Union, formed by airlines supported by the Junkers factory, a connection to Königsberg, which in turn had a rail link to Berlin.

The first Finnish pilot: Gunnar Lihr

In summer 1924, Aero recruited its first Finnish pilot, Gunnar Lihr, bringing the total number of employees to seven.

Besides operating scheduled services, the company worked hard to arouse interest in flying among the Finns, and in 1925 gave 833 public demonstration flights.

Regular flights to Tallinn and Stockholm continued. In May 1926, the Junkers factory's Nord-Europa Union and the Trans-Europa Union were merged into an organisation of sixteen airlines.

The Union's German airlines formed soon after this, however, Deutsche Luft Hansa with the German company Aero Lloyd, whereupon Junkers' support for Aero, among others, declined significantly.

In 1926 Aero, with a state-guaranteed loan, purchased a three-engine, nine-passenger Junkers G 24, which was brought to Helsinki on 4 June and put into service on the Stockholm route. As the aircraft was not equipped with skis for the winter, it was used only in summer as a seaplane until 1935.

Aero receives wide publicity

In 1927, Aero became a member of IATA (The International Air Transport Association), which had been founded eight years earlier.

The late 1920s were characterised by events not directly related to scheduled operations. In 1927 the company's managing director and a group of journalists embarked on Aero's first round-Finland flight. Lasting more than a month, the flight tour went as far north as Rovaniemi on the Arctic Circle. Aero's board of management had previously discussed the company's domestic traffic plans, and the aim of the tour was to stimulate interest among decision-makers.

Aero was already hopeful at this stage of transferring flights to airstrips on land. The towns and cities of this country of 60,000 lakes were reluctant to build such airstrips, however. But there was progress on the seaplane side, when the opening of the Turku-Ruissalo air harbour in May 1927 enabled flight traffic to start between Turku and Stockholm.

In June 1928, an Aero Junkers F 13 piloted by Gunnar Lihr took part in the search for the explorer Umberto Nobile's airship, Italia, which had crashed on Spitzbergen. Lihr succeeded in rescuing one of the expedition team, a feat which brought considerable publicity in the world's press for both Lihr and Aero.

Two years later, Aero received more international press coverage when a Junkers F 13 located the Norwegian vessel, Bratvaag, which was carrying from Spitzbergen the remains of the crew of the ill-fated 1897 Andree Expedition.

To Finnish ownership

In August 1929, Aero O/Y's founder Bruno Lucander died suddenly. The company lost its managing director, who during his brief term of office had made his mark in airline history. Gunnar Ståhle was appointed Lucander's successor.

Lucander's death also had indirect consequences, because now the Junkers company was Aero's biggest shareholder. Finnish investors succeeded, however, in buying Junkers out, and as the 1930s began Aero finally became an entirely Finnish company. By this time the airline's fleet consisted of four Junkers F 13s and one Junkers G 24.

YEARS 1930-1938

The 1930s began in a spirit of Nordic cooperation. In 1930, Aero and ABA launched the name "Scandinavian Air Express" to market the companies' routes between Stockholm and Helsinki as well as Aero's route between Helsinki and Tallinn. Onward flight connections made major European cities highly accessible.

In the same year, the Nordic countries began operating joint night airmail services. Until 1937 the flights took place in the summer and reached all the way to Amsterdam. Besides the Helsinki-Stockholm route, Aero was also responsible for the flights between Stockholm and Copenhagen.

In January 1932, the company ordered a Junkers Ju 52/3m. This was a three-engine, low-wing aircraft seating fourteen passengers. Aero operated the aircraft with floats, and only later fitted it with wheels, which initially restricted flights to the summer months only.

The first Ju 52/3 went into service on the Helsinki-Stockholm route on 1 July 1932. In the period 1932-42, Aero took delivery of five Ju 52/3m aircraft.

Seaplanes consigned to history

The first civil airport in Finland was opened at Turku Artukainen on 8 September 1935. The opening of Stockholm Bromma on 23 May 1936 increased the pressure on Helsinki to open a civil airport, too.

Flights began from Malmi in December 1936, although the airport was not opened officially until May 1938.

Aero made its last seaplane flight from Helsinki Katajanokka to Stockholm Lindarängen on 15 December 1936. After this, the fleet was completely on wheels, and Aero operated at last from solid ground.

In March 1937, Aero acquired the first of two D.H. 89A Dragon Rapides. The aircraft, a seven-passenger bi-plane powered by two piston engines, was purchased with a special purpose - Aero had decided to start scheduled flights within Finland. Seaplanes had already flown, of course, to Turku and Mariehamn, but only to stop over on the way to Stockholm.

The Dragon Rapide went into service from Helsinki to Viipuri on 1 May 1937 and a couple of days later from Helsinki to Tampere. In 1938, after the delivery of the second Rapide, the Viipuri route was extended to Imatra and the Tampere route to Vaasa. A year later, the northern route was extended as far as Oulu and Kemi.

Internationalisation interrupted by war

The late 1930s saw few changes to Aero's international network. In 1938 the Tallinn route was extended via Riga and Kaunas to Berlin. There were, however, many plans for international services. The Olympic Games, due to be held in Helsinki in 1940, were also expected to increase flight traffic to Finland.

For these reasons, in October 1938 Aero ordered two German Focke-Wulf Fw 200B (Condor) aircraft, to be delivered in autumn 1939. The Focke-Wulf Condor was a four-engine low-wing aircraft, fitted with a retractable undercarriage. It had 26 seats and a cruising speed of 325 kph. The Condor's long-range potential made it suitable for international flights and in the mid-1930s Aero was planning a trans-Atlantic service in cooperation with other Nordic airlines.

The war in Europe changed everything, however. Aero never received the Condors it ordered, not could it participate in further negotiations on the Nordic countries' North Atlantic traffic. The 1940 Olympic Games were also cancelled.