Aviation fans have been invited to celebrate Finnair’s 100th anniversary year and have the chance of winning two business class tickets to Tokyo or Helsinki.
The airline company – one of the major international operators at Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport – will turn 100 in November and it is marking the centenary by featuring iconic Moomin characters on the livery of two Airbus A350 aircraft (registration numbers OH-LWP and OH-LWO) throughout 2023, flying to various long-haul destinations in Finnair’s global network.
“Finnair’s mission is to enrich life by bridging the world,” said CEO Topi Manner. “This is also the theme of our centenary. Moomins represent friendship, community and going on adventures together, so they are a great fit for our values. Customers will be able to see the centenary in many ways throughout 2023, as we remember our heritage and look forward to the next 100 years.”
Added Roleff Kråkström, managing director of Moomin Characters Ltd., “Finnair is one of Moomin’s major licensees and we’ve been working together since the 1990s. We’re very happy to see this collaboration extended with the new Moomin livery on Finnair aircraft. Moomin is a character brand grounded in the universal and timeless values of tolerance, acceptance and friendship upon which Nordic societies are built. These are the values that come to life in the Moomin embrace depicted in the Finnair 100 livery.”
In addition to the Moomin livery – featuring pictures of Moomintroll and Snorkmaiden – Finnair’s technical operations department in Helsinki has painted the centenary slogan “Bringing us together since 1923” on three other aircraft.
As for the competition, participants are invited to share photos and videos of the Moomin livery on Instagram with the hashtag #finnairmoomin, by 31 March. Finnair will reward one content producer with two business class flights to either Tokyo or Helsinki. More information is available here.
The Moomin Story
The Moomins are the central characters in a series of books and a Moomintroll comic strip by Tove Jansson. The stories centre on adventures that members of the family, who live in a house in Moominvalley, have with their various friends. Born in 1914, Tove Jansson studied art in Finland and abroad, and her first Moomin-like character was seen in the magazine Garm in 1943. The first Moomin story, “The Moomins and the Great Flood”, was published in 1945 in Swedish.
A series of more than 100 half-hour Moomin animations was sold to over 60 countries in 1990, and three years later the Moominwoorld theme park opened in Naantali, a resort town in south-western Finland.
In 2006, Canadian publisher Drawn Quarterly released the renewed Moomin comic strip in English, while the animated Moominvalley TV series premiered worldwide in 2019, featuring cutting edge 2D/3D blending animation techniques.
